Glascow 1999 Dissertacao

Johnstone, Charles (1992) The tenants' movement and housing struggles in
Glasgow, 1945-1990. PhD thesis
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THE TENANTS' MOVEMENT AND HOUSING
STR.UGGLES HI GLASGOW, 1945-1990
CHARLES JOHNSTONE, If.. A. (HONS. )
SUBMITTED FOR AWARD OF PH. D ••
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY.
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
SEPTEMBER, 1992.
(c) CHARLES JOHNSTONE, 1992.

TIDS THESIS IS DEDICATED
TO KATE. LOUISE. KATHRYN AND.
MY MOTHER. :MARY
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: TENANTS' ORGANISATIONS AND

HOUSING STRUGGLES
I: Introduction 1.
II: Sociology and the 'Community' Tradition 8.
III: • Urban Social Movements' and the

Deconstruction or • Community' 23.
IV: Making History: OrganiC Intellectuals

and Housing Struggles 33.
V: Research Note 40.
NOTES: 45.
CHAPTER ONE: HOUSING AND HOUSING MANAGEMENT

IDEOLOGY IN GLASGOW. 1886-1990
1.1: Introduction 47.
1.2: Historical Overview 48.
1.3: The Background to Housing Management in

Glasgow 54.
1.4: Housing Management in Glasgow

1945-1970 75.
1. 5: Housing Management and Practice in

Glasgow, 1970-1990 107.
1.6: Community Development 113.
1.7: Area Management 125.
1.8: 'Tenant Participation' 135.
1.9: Community Renewal 144.
NOTES: 152.
CHAPTER 1VO: EARLY POST-WAR HOUSING STRUGGLES
2.2: The Political Context or the Sale or

Council Houses 1945-1952 169.
2.3: No Homes ror the Heroes 176.
2.4: Housing For Need Not Prorit: Merrylee 194
2.5: Conclusion 221.
NOTES: 229.
APPENDIX: 224.
CHAPTER THREE: THE ARDEN-ALL SCOTLAND RENT-

INCREASE STRIKE OF 1958-59
3.2: Rent Strikes in History 250.
3.3: The Landlords Bill 257.
3.4: Not A Penny on the Rent 263.
NOTES: 293.
CHAPTER FOUR: TENANTS' ASSOCIATIONS IN

CASTLEMILK
4.2: Background: Garden Suburb or Concrete

Jungle? 310.
4.3: Moving up the Milk: The 1950's 320.
4.4: From Peripheral Paradise to 'Problem

Estate': 1960-1980 335.
4.5: The Re-structuring o£ a Housing Scheme:

Castlemilk in the 80s 356.
NOTES: 377.
CHAPTER FIVE: TIlE GLASGOW COUNCIL OF TENANTS'
ASSOCIATIONS
5.1: Introduction 384-.
5.2: Organising From Below 387.
5.3: Taking the Politics out or Housing

Issues 396.
5.~: In or Against the State 4-06.
NOTES: 4-22.
CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION: RECOVERING HOUSING

STRUGGLES
6.2: The Social Significance or Housing

Struggles 434.
NOTES: 4-41.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have provided incalculable
encouragement and assistance in the process of
producing this study. Not all of them can be
thanked individually and I would like to record my
sincere gratitude for all the support that I
received. However, there are some people whose
support I would like to acknowledge here.
This study would never have got off the ground
without the research funding provided by the
E.S.R.C. and their support for such projects
should be commended.
To all those tenants in Castlemilk for
providing me with invaluable information about the
history of tenants' associations in the scheme.
John Wilson and David McWhinnie, in particular,
who made me very welcome while contributing to my
understanding of the development of tenants'
associations in the scheme
To all those active in the Glasgow Council of
Tenants' Associations who kindly responded to my
persistent questions about their activities and
tolerated my presence. Special thanks in this
regard to Bobby Alexander, John Lyons, Martin Lee,

Alex Paton, Michael Courtney and Frances
McCormack.
To rain McKecknie for bringing the Merrylee
campaign to my attention during our conversation
on the upper-deck of a Pollok bus, and to Chas
Watters for responding to my enquiries regarding
the Arden Rent Strike.
The staff in the Glasgow Room of the Mitchell
Library; the staff in Castl emil k Library; Irene
/ O'Brien and her colleagues in Strathclyde Regional

"
Archi ves; Audrey Canni ng, curator of the Will iam
Gallagher Memorial Library; Pat Malcolm, Clydebank
Library and all the staff in Glasgow University
Library for pointing me in the right direction.
The many officials of the City's Housing
Management Department and those Labour politicians
who gave up their valuable time to answer my
questions.
Thanks to Gerry Mooney for helpful comments on
earl ier drafts of some of the chapters. Special
thanks to Paul Li ttl ewood for all your hel p and
for solving the late crisis when my wordprocessor
broke down.
To Kate, Lousie, Kathryn and the rest of my
family for all their support, for enduring all my

shortcomings and allowing me the space to complete
this study.
A special thanks is due to my friend, Sean
Damer, for critical comments, encouragement and
comradely assistance at crucial stages in this
study.
Finall y, a very special thanks is due to my
supervisor, Ruth Madigan. Whil e I am totally
responsible for the contents of this dissertation,
it could not have been completed without the
constructi ve and hel pful guidance that Ruth was
al ways wi I I i ng to provide. I have been fortunate
to have benefited from Ruth's enthusiasm and
support. Ruth has my warmest gratitude for her
endless assistance.
Charlie Johnstone.
September 1992.
**********************
ABBREVIATIONS
A. M. C. Area Management Committee(s)
A. P. T. Area of Priority Treatment
C.D.O. Community Development Officer
C. D. P. Community Development Project
C.H.I.P. Castlemilk Housing Involvement Project
C. I. D. City Improvements Department
C.I.T. City Improvements Trust
C. R. A. G. Community Renewal Action Group
G.C.T.A. Glasgow Council of Tenants'
Associations
G. D. C. Glasgow District Council
G. E. A. R. Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal
I. L. P. Independent Labour Party
N. A. T. R. National Association of Tenants and
Residents
N. U. W. M. National Unemployed Workers Movement
S. C. T. A. Scottish Council of Tenants'
Associations
S. R.A. Strathclyde Regional Archives

S. R. C. Strathclyde Regional Council
S. S. H. A. Scottish Special Housing Association
S. T. O. Scottish Tenants' Association
T. P. A. S. Tenant Participation Advisory Service
**************************
/
/
ABSTRACT
In recent years local authorities, urged on by
central Government, have been extending the
, rights' of council tenants under , tenant
partici pat ion' schemes. These developments have
been documented by the new parvenu class of
academics in housing research centres. Like most
other academic studies of housing issues, these
reports concentrate on administrative, legislative
and managerial aspects to housing policy
development. They therefore ignore, or underpl ay,
the fact that there has been intense and
widespread local class struggles over the state's
provision of housing for the working class for the
I ast one hundred years. Sociologists have not
totally ignored the importance of housing
struggles and some recent studies within the
'localities' framework have taken such struggles
into consideration. However, there are no studies,
as far as I am aware, which attempt to explain the
nature of local housing struggles historically.
This study is concerned with the development
of the tenants' movement and housing struggles in
post-War Gl asgow. It seeks to locate the changes
relating to housing struggles in the context of
wider social and economic changes within the

, local ity' . Glasgow's public sector tenants'
movement has been in exi stence f'or over 60 years
and there is a weal th of' undocumented housing
struggl es that have pI ayed an important part in
the history of' working class lif'e in the city.
The analysis taken in this dissertation seeks
to conceptualise these housing struggles in a
framework based around the concept of social
reproduction. It is with a class analysis of'
relations of reproduction. as opposed to
consumption cleavages, that we can understand
housing struggles at a local level.
The introduction is concerned with providing
an outline of' existing sociological approaches to
the study of' tenants' organisations and 'urban'
struggl es.
The origins and development of' housing
provision in the specific context of Glasgow is
the focus of chapter one. This chapter also
examines the emergence of' housing management
ideology in the city. An attempt at explaining the
response by the local state to the 'housing
problem' will be discussed in this context.
In chapter two the emphasis moves to a
discussion of two important early post-War housing
struggl es: the squatting campaign of' 194-6 and a

campai gn aga i nst the sal e of counc i 1 houses in
1951-52. This is contextualised within a
discussion of wider housing policies and explained
in relation to the city's working class culture.
Chapter three contains a discussion of a Rent
Strike which began in Glasgow in the summer of
1958. Both of these chapters challenge the common
assumption that housing struggles were non-
existent during the period under discussion.
In chapter four the focus shifts to a
discussion of tenants' associations in a massive
post-War peripheral housing scheme: Castlemilk. An
attempt is made to locate the changes in tenant
acti vity to the re-structuring of the scheme in
the 1980s.
Chapter five provides an account of the
Gl asgow Counc i 1 of Tenants' Associations and
relates the discussion to recent developments
within housing management towards , tenant
participation' .
In the concluding chapter we will focus on the
significance of housing struggles for an analysis
of 'urban' protest.
***********************
" ••• The poor man •.. ~eels himsel~ out o~ the
sight or others, groping in the dark. Mankind
takes no notice or him. He rambles and
wanders unheeded. In the midst o~ a crowd. at
church. in the market ... he is in as much
obscurity as he would be in a garret or
cell ar. He is not di sapproved. censured. or
reproached; he is onl y not seen". John Adams,
quoted in Herbert G. Gutman. The Black Family
in Slavery and Freedom. 1750-1925. piix.

- 1 -
I:NTRODUCTIO:N:
TENANTS' ORGANISATIONS AND HOUSING STRUGGLES
I. INTRODUCTION
"People l'igbt and lose the battle, and the
thing they 1'0ugbt for comes about in spite of
their defeat. and when It turns out to be not what
they meant. other people have to fight 1'0r what
they meant under another name". - Wi 11 i am Morr Is.
News From Nowhere
For well over a century now working class
housing in Glasgow has formed one of the most
persistent pol itical issues for the local state
and, for different reasons, for tenants'
organisations struggling to improve the living
conditions of working class Glaswegians.
Throughout all of this per i od numerous
commentators have referred to housing conditions
in Glasgow as being the worst in Britain. In the
mid-nineteenth century Engels, quoting from a
report on a section of the city by a government
Commissioner, refers to the appall ing conditions
pertai ni ng then:
- 2 -
"I have seen wretchedness in some or its worst
phases both here and upon the Continent. but until
I visited the wynds of Glasgow I did not believe
that so much criJle. misery, and disease eould
exist in any civilised country. In the lower
I odgi ng-houses ten. twelve, so:metimes twenty
persons of both sexes, all ages and various
degrees nakedness. sleep indiscriminately
huddled together upon the floor. These dwell ings
are usually so damp. filthy, and ruinous. that no
one eould wish to keep his horse in one or
the.... (1)
The working class experience of housing
conditions has obviously improved since Engels was
writing. One significant factor in the
amelioration of the living conditions of the
worki ns- cl ass was the struggl e over rent control
and the provision of council housing in the 1915
GI asgow Rent Strike. This was an important
struggle against the private landlords who
factored most of the properties Engels was
referring to in the above quotation (see S. Damer,
1980 and J. Mel I i ng. 1980 and 1983). Neverthel ess.
as one witness to the 1986 Grieve Inquiry Into
Housing in Glasgow indicated, the improvements
have remained relatively poor:

- 3 -
"You are talking about f'a.JIlilies who have .aybe
f'ive kids in a three apartaent. It ~ not wall to
wall carpets.. It was wall to wall beds! You have
got to live there to know what i t Is like". (2)
So, despite the changed conditions, there are
still. in William Morris's terms, battles to be
fought. Indeed, the question of who will provide
adequate, affordable, rented housing for the
poorer sections of the working class in the 1990s
and beyond- in Gl asgow and el sewhere- is al most
identical to the questions that were raised in the
late nineteenth century. The hegemony of orthodox
Conservative ideology on housing and social policy
over the last decade has left thousands of
families homeless alongside the relative and
absolute decline in the avaliabil ity of council
housing. Ironical 1 y. this period has also
witnessed a rapid decline in the number of
academics, politicians and 'housing experts' who
have been willing to argue the case for the
provision of council housing <see, for example, D.
Clapham, 1989; Forrest and Murie, 1988). The new
financial regime for Housing Associations, which
came into operation with the passing of the 1988
Housing Act, could also mean that these agencies,
1 ike their counterparts a century ago. are less

- 4 -
likely to provide substant i al numbers of houses
for the poorer sections of society at rents they
can afford (see N. Ginsburg, 1988; and R. Best.
1992) . The issue of tenants' rights as
"customers/consumers" has also, paradoxi call y.
arrived at the same time as council housing is in
decline. While many local authorities have
responded to this, by pursuing policies on 'tenant
pa-rticipation' , the overall changes in housing
pol icy during the I ast decade has seen a growth.
particularly in the last few years, of tenants'
organisations being formed spontaneously to defend
their own interests. For instance. in 1980 the
GI asgow Council of Tenants' Associations had 30
affiliated tenants' associations but, by 1990.
their number of affil iated members had grown to
138. This growth is directly related to the fears
that many council tenants express regarding the
recent developments in the state's plans for
housing provision in the future.
While housing conditions and housing policy in
Glasgow will be a recurring theme in this
dissertation it is not the main focus of the
arguments presented. This dissertation is
specifically concerned with the development and
changes in the tenants' movement and housing

- 5 -
struggles in post-war Glasgow. During the past two
decades Urban Sociologists have been searching in
every corner of the world's cities- from Berlin to
Boston, form New York to Turin. from Los Angeles
to Madrid and Glasgow- in the quest to find "urban
social movements" (see, for instance. M. Castell s
1983; S. Katz and M. Mayer 1985; S. Lowe, 1986; C.
G. Pickvance 1985; and C.M. Reintges. 1990). These
researchers have been mainly concerned with
producing the reI evant evidence to support a
taxonomy of collective behaviour which asserts
empirical similarities between I new social
movements' and the effect they have on the social
structure. This kind of classification leads to
the absurd grouping together of the American civil
rights movement of the 1950s and 19605, the
student movement of the 1960s and 19705, the

Q
Women's Libertion Movement, the squatters movement
1\
in the barrios of Latin America and the
shantytowns of South Africa, the urban protest in
Italy in the mid-1970s, the Green/Ecology movement
and so forth, in the forlorn hope that some kind
of el ecti ve affinity between these movements will
be found. Although it is not often explicitly
stated, a good deal of thi s literature reI i es on
the notion that the potential of the labour
movement to act as a transformative agent of

- 6 -
social change has collapsed. Theref'ore, these
writers implicitly endorse the description of' the
'new' sets of' social relations developing within
contemporary capitalist society that are contained
in the writings of' post-modernist theorists <see,
f'or instance, A. Gorz, 1982; J. Habermas. 1981; A.
Mel ucci, 1989; C. Of'f'e, 1980; and A. Touraine.
1974. f'or a critique, see D. Byrne, 1984 and 1989;
and D. Harvey, 1989 ). This kind of'
conceptualistion has made it all but impossible to
understand what constitutes a 'social movement'
or, as Eyerman and Jamison noted:
" •.• the understanding o~ social .ave.ents has
come to be subjected to the whias of' the acade.lc
marketpl ace. SoclololD' has provided a nUDer of'
mutually Irreconcilable .ades of' understanding
social JlK)vements. what philosophers call
incoaaensurable explanations". (3)
In this elusive and unconvincing search, f'ew
of' these sociologists have thought tenants'
organisations worthy of' serious study. There has
been a general I ack of' interest in the study of'
the development of' tenants' organisations within
British urban sociology, as one recent study
suggested:
- 7 -
"Council house tenants' associations are
co-.on in Britain but are a relatively
undo,cumented form or urban IDOveaent .•.• There are
no studies or these organisations across a ti8e
span of more than a few IDOnths .•. "(4)
This is surprising in itself, since the
sociological significance of studying rent strikes
was emphasi sed by Moor"house et al (1972) al most
twenty years ago. Schifferes (1976) has also drawn
attention to the tenants' movement in the 1930s
and the independent role of the working class in
shaping housing pol icy. However, i t was not until
Darner (1980) and Melling (1983) produced their
different analyses of the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike
that sociologists and Labour historians began to
take the study of the tenants' movement
seriously. This had both positive and negative
outcomes. The 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike, in spite
of attempts by liberal histori ans like Mcl ean
(1983) to deny its significance, is now widely
recognised as a classic example of working class
struggle outside the sphere of production.
However, this is the only serious attempt to
address these issues and the study of tenants'
campaigns has progressed l i t t l e since then. It has
been a case of 70 forgotten years.

- 8 -
The scarcity of significant secondary sources
and the difficulties associated with tracing
primary sources meant that an account of the
tenants' movement in Glasgow could only be
assembled after detailed study of archival
material, participant observation and recorded
testimonies from various sources. <see research
note at end of chapter). Thi s has allo\oVed me to
produce an historical account of the tenants'
movement in Glasgow which also takes into
cons iderat ion the rol e of the local state duri ng
specific periods. There are no other accounts of
tenants' organisations, as far as I am aware,
which attempt to provide an historical analysis of
the changing nature of these organisations in
reI ation to wider social and pol i tical processes.
Therefore, this dissertation must proceed through
a discussion of the major themes which
characterise existing studies of tenants'
associations and similar organisations. These
studies fall into two main areas- the 'community
studies' tradition and those studies concerned
with 'social movements'.
II. SOCIOLOGY AND THE • COMMUNITY' TRADITION
According to Williams (1975 ) the word
'community' has been part of the English language

- 9 -
since the fourteenth century, when it probabl y
derived from the word common- as in 'common
peopl e'. By the nineteenth century the sense of
locality was strongly developed, in the context of
rapidly industrialising societies, and 'community'
was used to define a mythical past or an
alternative future, and sometimes both. In the
twentieth century the term 'community' has come to
permeate our language and is used in a wide array
of contexts to define real or imagined
relationships. The passing away of 'community' has
been a central and recurring feature of
sociological writings, and literary texts, for the
past 150 years. Therefore, the concept of
• community' has had a peculiar history in
sociological writings. A 1 ist compiled in 1955
produced 94 definitions, of which the highest
common factor was that "all definitions deal with
people" <G. A. Hillery, 1955) . According to
Hill ery. three aspects constantly recur in
definitions of 'community' area, common ties and
social interaction. Nevertheless, there remains a
lack of a clear definition of the concept of
I communi ty' . The central contradi ct i on has been
summed up neatly by Abrams:

- 10-
liThe paradox of' the sociology of cOIBIDUDity Is
the coexistence of a body of theory Which
constantly predicts the collapse of co..nnlty and
a body of empirical studies which finds co.aunity
alive and well". (5)
The confusion that Abrams is referring to
arises from the failure to distinguish between
social and spatial variables. which was inherent
in the term 'community' i tsel f. Therefore. whil e
this section is primarily concerned with an
analysis of the relevant empirical studies
('community studies') it is essential to begin our
discussion with a brief outline of the history of
the idea of 'community' within sociology.
There is a strongly effective continuation of
old ideas of 'community' which permeates the
sociological writings on this subject (see R. A.
Nisbet, 1967). The foundation for the British
'community studies' of the post-war years derives
from two main sources: the nineteenth century
'urban way of life' debate and the Chicago school
of sociology_
The nineteenth century witnessed a massive
intellectual revolt against the city, a factor
which was expressed in the contemporary literature
(see R. Will iams, 1985) . One reaction to the

-11-
horrors of urban I iving led to a debate which
indicated that there was something intrinsically
distinctive about cities which affected the life-
style of the individual. as evidenced in Simmel's
writings:
"The deepest problelBS of modern life derive
from the clai_ of the individual to preserve the
autonomy and individuality of his existence in the
face of overwhelming social forces, of historical
heritage. of external culture and of the technique
of life". (6)
The destruction of 'traditional values'.
according to Simmel. I eads the migrant to detest
the city and is expressed in the urban dwell er
becoming cynical. blase and exploitative or, more
precisely. to adopting an anti-urban persona. This
conception of urban I iving was similar to the
theoretical framework establ ished by Tonnies in
the late nineteenth century (see C. Bell and H.
Newby. 1974->' Tonnies developed his sociological
analysis through a distinction between two
different types of society: " Ge me i nschaft"
<transl ated as 'community' ) and "Gesellschaft"
<translated alternately as , society' or
'association'). Gemeinschaft. which characterised
social relations in the agrarian village. was

- 12 -
regarded by Tonnies as a living. 'natural' form of
society where all its members were bound together
by a shared order of 'natural' relationships.
Relationships were centered on shared commitments,
work, leisure and customs. This shared
understanding of the world led to a deep
attachment to pI ace. It was this 'community of
natural reI ationshi ps' which the Industrial
Revolution destroyed and replaced with the
Gesellschaft form of society. There was no
necessary I community of feel ing' amongst the
people who entered into the Geselischaft
arrangement, things had onl y val ue as regards to
profit. Tonnies argued that there was something
unnatural about this kind of society which could
only lead to ambition and the desire for power
over others.
This was the theoretical background to the
development of anti-urban attitudes which I ed to
the planning of utopian settlements to counteract
the evils of cities while attempting to create
Gemeinschaft type of relationships. It was also
from this anti-urbanism that middle class
philanthropists posited communal societies as
model s for a more rigid system of social order:
the 'community as ideology'. This was exemplified

- 13-
in the attempts to bring • nature' back into the
city by designers such as Ebenezer Howard in the
nineteenth century and Lewis Mumford in the
twentieth.
The second precursor of the 'community
studies' was the Chicago School of sociologists,
centered in the Uni versi ty of Chicago from about
1915 (see C. Bell & H. Hewby. 1971. and M.Bulmer,
1984). The Chicago School developed the theory of
human ecology, or urban ecology. These ecological
theories, exempl ified in the work of Robert Park
(1967), tried to explain both how cities grow and
how they come to take the shape that they do.
Their attention, therefore, was directed at the
i nterrel at i onshi ps between phys i cal form and
social organisation. In 1938 Louis Wirth attempted
to combine the findings of the Chicago School into
a comprehensive theory of the social order of
cities (L. Wirth, 1938). Wirth attempted to
account for the changes in social reI ationships
which result from the expansion of cities and to
examine the implications of thi s growth. He
defined the city as a 'relatively large. dense and
permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous
individuals'. These three factors created a social
structure in which primary relationships were

- 14-
inevitably replaced by secondary contacts that
were , impersonal. segmental, transitory.
superficial, and often predatory in nature'. As a
result the city dweller became , anonymous.
isol ated, secul ar, relativistic, rational and
sophisticated'. In order to function within urban
society the city dwell er was forced to combine
with others, to organise corporations,
associations, representative forms of government
and so forth. These repl aced the primary groups
and the integrated way of life found in rural and
other pre-industrial settlements. (7) Wirth. like
Simmel and Tonnies before him, was critical of
urban-industrial society and regarded the 'loss of
community' as a major disadvantage. British
sociologists were also concerned to make their
mark in this debate, as an early twentieth century
study indicated clearly:
" ... OUT subject is co..unity, and the science
of cOlHRlnity is sociology". (8)
It was against this theoretical background
that the 'community studies tradition' in British
sociology developed in the post-War years. The
definition of , communi ty' that most of these
researchers accepted was similiar to the one
provided by Macivar and Page:

- 15-
" •.• an area of social living :aarked by so.e
degree of social coherence. The bases o~ co.aunity
are localIty and co..unity sentIment". (9)
The notion inherent in this definition is that
, community' is an autonomous soc i al system wi th
certain analytical values of its own. In the 1950s
and early 1960s a large number of studies based on
this view were conducted in various British cities
<see, for instance, R, Frankenberg, 1966; M. Kerr,
1958; L. Kuper, 1953; T. Lupton & D. 1\Ii tchell •
1954; and M. Young and P. Willmott, 1957) .
However, the forerunner to all of these studies
was Durant's study of a new 'cottage estate' at
Watling. on the outskirts of London, in the 1930s
<R. Durant. 1939). What real I y concerned Durant
was the apparent lack of 'community I ife' on the
e'state. Her key question was: • has the new housing
estate grown into a community?'. The new residents
on this estate had moved from London, and Durant
details the hostile reception they were faced with
from middle class residents in an adJ oi ni ng
estate. (10) The experience of hostH i ty led
Watling residents (the male one/~s) to seek an
active social life of their own. The first stage
was the formation of a residents' association,
followed by the production of an estate paper.

- 16-
Durant's main contention about the associational
li~e on this estate was that, there was a pattern
of initial lonliness ~ollowed by unity against the
outside world, giving rise to an agitational
residents' association. When this had achieved its
task, most o~ the residents 'settl e down to a
home-centered, but small group oriented social
li~e·. Her approach, and some o~ her ~indings were
to become ~amil iar themes in the • community
studies' o~ the 1950s and 1960s.
The exempl ar of this genre of studies was,
undoubtedly. Young and Willmott's research for the
Institute of Community Studies, a privately-funded
research institution with an explicit policy
development focus (:N. Young & P. Willmott, 1957)
The purpose of their study was clearly indicated
from the beginning:
"This book is about the ef'l'ect of' one of' the
newest upon one of' the oldest of' our social
institutions. The new Is the housing estate ..• the
old Institution Is the l'aall)'"'. (11)
Young and Willmott were concerned with the
question o~ what happened to family 1 ife when
people moved to a new suburban housing estate, and
what consequences this entail s for 01 der members
of the famil y. Their study, therefore, was

- 17-
explicilty concerned with the relationship between
social service provision and famil y 1 ife. Young
and Willmott followed 48 families from Bethnal
Green in East London to the fictt~iously named
'Greenl iegh', twenty mil es outside London. This
comparative study focused on the family as the
main unit of analysis. The thing that the authors
found to be the most important single phenomenon
in Bethnal Green was family and kinship. The
cohesion of life in Bethnal Green was seen to have
depended on the shared poverty and lack of social
and geographical mobility. The extended family
acted as a bridge between the individual and the
'community', the resul t being a strong sense of
shared identity and • communi ty' . In Greenl e igh.
however, this bridge had apparently collapsed.
Young and Will mott, and most of the other
'community studies' literature of this period,
show a particular fascination in 'traditional
working class communities', which were thought of
as harbouring a distinctive subculture
characterised by solidaristic and closely knit
social systems. The family as a basic unit of
analysis runs through many of the studies, as does
the consequences for {"ami I y Ii fe of resettl ement
on a suburban housing estate. Frankenberg's review

- 18-
of the 'community studies' literature identified a
common model of associational I ife contained in
most of them:
" . . . There is a f'aail iar pattern of' initial
lonel iness f'ollo~d by unity against the outside
world giving rise to an agitational Resident's
Association. This achieves its tasks and JM)st of'
the inhabitants settle down to a home-centred but
small group orientated social I if'e •.•• A minority
contInues the public lif'e of' the co..unity centre.
ThIs minority Is drawn f'rom one status group". (12)
Thi s part i al account of the development of
tenants' associations in new housing schemes
resulted from a faulty methodology, with most of
the studies being restricted to the 'settling in'
period, and the concepts of cl ass and 'community'
generally treated seperately. While the analyses
were presented wi thi n a frame'WOrk whi ch reveal ed
some fascinating empirical observations of family
I ife, they were often romantacised, ignoring the
gross sexual inequalities within such
'communities' . They also failed to provide a
critical account of the state's purpose in
embarking on a wide-scale process of urban renewal
and the removal of whole populations to the
outskirts of British cities (see E. Brook and D.

- 19-
Finn, 1977). These weaknesses are a reflection of
the lack of clarity over the concept of
• communi ty' itself, and through attempting to
study social relations solely in relation to
geographical space as a determinant of social
action. These criticisms were cl earl y exposed by
Dennis, and are worth quoting in full:
" ••• The locality-colDJDUnity idea haplies fixing
one's eyes on the part loca..lity factors play in
the aetiology o~ social and personal proble.a. and
it presuaes that these probleas can be dea..lt with
e~:ficaciously by adJusting local ity institutiona..l
f'oras and applying psychotherapeutic aeasures to
persons who work. and I ive in the problem loca..l ity.
This is obviously not a very threatening thing to
do. On first sight it does not present a challenge
to any fundaaental institutions or establ ished
socia..l belie~s. It does not appear to involve the
eXa.Jlllination of' the contribution of JDOre genera..l
socia..l structural and cultural factors. Certainly.
any serious study o~ problems which happen to be
concentrated in a locality is bound to lead to a
study o~ extra-I ocaI explanations. But such
studies are comparatively rare. General I y. the
presumption that neighbourhood causes and cures
are of very great importance ef~ectively

- 20-
stul tif'ies the study. No great good is achieved;
but ne i ther are any powerf'ul interests af'f' ected.
nor any important establ ished bel ief's questioned.
I t therefore reaains an ideology Which can attract
research funds. and catch the ear of' establ ish.ed
opinion. It is a .inor exaaple of' a ' ..yth" in
Sorel's sense- a social belief' which is not
necessarily invalid <though i t is likely to be to
some extent) but which is bel ieved for reasons
other than its objective val fdity'·. (13)
The reason that Denni s has been quoted at
length here is that, the social science literature
has come full-circle with regard to this debate.
The critique of I community studies' which
developed in the late 1960s emphasised the
"Weaknesses inherent in an anal ys i s that re i fled
the notion of • communi ty' into a territorial
entity, rather than viewing it as a social
category to be studied wi th reference to wider
socio-economic and historical processes. The
abstract version of this critique was exemplified
by studies from a pol itical economy perspective,
<M. Castell s, 1977a; and D. Harvey, 1973 and
1985) , and the reports of the CDP's provided
empirical and theoretical backing to the continued
scepticism with regard to the 'community-locality'

- 21 -
approach <C.D.P. 1976 and 1977). Nevertheless,
recent accounts of changes within contemporary
capital ist society have brought the analysis of
'local ities' back to the f'oref'ront of' urban
sociology and social geography <see, f'or instance,
P. Cooke, 1987; A. Giddens, 1981; and D. Gregory
and J. Urry 1985b). This literature does not take
the idea of' 'community' as gi ven but. rather
locates processes within localities to the
changing nature of contemporary capitalist society
in terms of uneven development and spatial
di visions of 1 abour, wi thin the wider context of'
debates around the concept of • disorganized'
capitalism (S. Lash & J. Urry, 1987). However, one
recent article has argued specif'ically f'or the
'rejuvination of community studies'
'0 ••• the sociology o-C comnmnity power remains a
topic of' enduring interest and importance, both
theoretically. e.plrlcally and practically in a
world where Whitehall-Town Hall. central-local
goveru.ent relations become .ore rather than less
contentious as time goes on, while the
possibilities -Cor grass-roots pol itical
Involvement. whether in housing. planning or
social weI rare, remain singularly HI
derl ned"'. <14)

- 22-
While sharing some of the concerns of Bulmer,
this dissertation will attempt to provide an
analYSis of the tenants' movement and housing
struggles in Glasgow which goes beyond the
'community' approach and takes into consideration
the cuI tural and pol it i cal changes at a broader
level and an historical account of how these have
had ramifications for actors at the social base.
Bulmer's argument for a return to the • sociology
of the primary group' offers I imi ted scope for
understanding these processes. The • community
studies' type of approach can, as chapter four
reveals, provide a useful, if limited. insight
into the social networks and the mobil isation of
resources within a locality that are essential to
the development of collective organisations
involved in housing struggles. However, as more
recent studies in the • local ity' framework have
recognised, all social relationships and
interactions take place in time and space. both of
which convey meaning to social actors and become
part of the structure which shapes the lived
experience of individuals and groups in society
(A. Giddens, 1981). The historical dimension to
this determination of social relations is clearly
emphasised by Preteceille:
- 23-
If • • • It is not onl y present reI ations of'
production that tend to organize 1 ife. but also
the past ones of the individual and of his or her
parents and relatives. They influence the present
through the possible social traJectories they have
deter.ined. through accumulated ~alth and goods,
through the language, cuI ture. know-how, etc,
acquired in past situations ... "(15)
Therefore, an account of tenants'
organisations and housing struggles (struggles
over reproduction) needs to go beyond the
'community' approach to a consideration of the
historical, pol i tical and cuI tural changes which
have shaped these movements. Before attempting an
outline of how this may be approached \\."e must
consider the analysis of • community pO\\."er'
contained in the writings on • urban social
movements', which developed in the late 1970s and
earl y 1980s.
III. 'URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS' AND THE
DECO:NSTRUCTION OF 'COMMUNITY'
In the 1970s the dominant paradigm in urban
sociology came under vigorous scrutiny by a number
of European Marxist theorists influenced by
Althusserian structuralism (L. Althusser, 1965;for
a critique of this general approach see E.P.

- 24-
Thompson, 1978). One of the main protagonists in
this revitalisation of urban sociology was
undoubtedly Manuel Castells (see, in particular,
M. Castell Sj 1977a, and 1983). In his earlier
writings Castells adhered to an AI thusserian
account of , scientific' or , theoret i cal •
practices, and suggested that urban sociology is
, not a scientific domain, nor a field for
observat ion, but rather an ideological
artef act' . (16) Despi te thi s comment, Castells
still accepted the 'urban' as a special focus for
anal ysis. However, in contrast to the Chicago
School (R.E. Park, E.W. Burgess and R.D. McKenzie,
1967; and L.Wirth. 1938) who placed an emphasis on
'natural' spatial processes, Castells argued that
in conditions of monopoly capital ism the 'urban
system' is the spatial expression of the processes
of capital accumulation and centralisation (see P.
Saunders, 1981 for a critique of Castells'
definition of the 'urban'). It is, according to
Castells, the sub-system within which labour power
is reproduced. This 'urban syste~. according to
Castell s, is characterised by secondary
contradictions which are caused by the state's
inability to make up the shortfall of publicly
funded services. The key term which Castells used

- 25-
to conceptualise these processes within the urban
system was 'collective consumption':
..... socialised cODBu.ption processes which are
largely deter.ined by state activity". (17)
In this interpretation, the effect of state
intervention in dealing with the urban 'crisis' in
modern capitalist societies generates 'new'
popul ar movements (urban social movements) which
emerge to challenge the state. Castells's writings
on urban social movements, despite the many
criticisms. have had a major infl uence on recent
studies of pol itical action within cities and are
germane to any discussion of the tenants' movement
and ·c .• hous i ng struggl es (see, for instance, P.
Dickens et aI, 1985; P. Dunleavy, 1980a; B. Elliot
and D. McCrone, 1982; A. Melucci. 1989; C. G.
Pickvance, 1985; and P. Saunders, 1981).
As Lowe rightl y points out, Castells
definition of what constitutes an 'urban social
movement' goes through three distinct phases (S.
Lowe, 1986) . In the context of his initial
structuralist interpretation of the urban process,
the urban system is seen as the arena of the
collective consumption process and, as we have
already indicated, is the focus of pol itical
conflict based on state intervention into the

- 26-
provision of key publ ic services. At this stage,
Castells still regarded the clash between capital
and I abour in the sphere of production as the
primary contradiction in advanced capital ist
society. It f'ollows f'rom this that urban social
movements, on their own, are incapable of
producing • ef'f'ects' that transform the structure
of social relations:
..... there is no qualitative transf'orJDation of'
the urban structure that is not produced by an
articulation of' the urban JM)veaents with other
IDOveJDents. in particular (in our societies> with
the working class movement and the political class
struggle". (18)
Castell s' s position at this stage was that,
for urban social movements to be succesful in
producing sustained • ef'fects' on the bal ance of'
cl ass f' orces. they required a leadership and
organisation connected to the advanced sections of'
the worki ng cl ass. The al ternati ve was f'or urban
movements to become:
..... instruaents of' participation within
general. do.inant institutional obJectives". (19)
In the next two phases of his writings
Castells moves from his original rigid structural
analysis of urban social movements. In his middle

- 27-
(Eurocommunist) phase, Castells analysis of urban
issues goes through a signi~icant change of
emphasis. The basis on which Castells arrives at
this change in perspective is his focus on a
number of i nterrel ated and long-term structural
tendencies within advanced capitalism which
heighten the significance of consumption issues,
particularly the increased intervention of the
state in both production and consumpt Ion.
According to Castells. these developments open up
'new' i nequal it i es in the sphere of' consumpt ion
between those who satisfy their consumption
, needs' i ndi vidual I y through the private market
and those who continue to rely on collective
provision by a declining public sector. This
identification of consumption sector cleavages
that cut across the class system, and the
promotion of urban issues in his analysis of
political struggle, led Castells to a concomitant
change in his conception of of urban social
movements. In this context. Castells signals a
move away from his earlier notion of proletarian
hegemony to the view that urban social movements
of a cross-class nature, remaining autonomous from
any pol itical parties, were of more significance
in building a democratic socialist alliance united
by a common concern with urban issues (M.

- 28-
Castell s, 1978b). This formul ation is extended in
Castells major third phase text, where he abandons
any notion of the determinate effects of structure
and class struggle on the actions of the state:
" .. the interpretations of the urban crisis
tend to be couched strictly in economistic teras,
identifying the source of our probleas in a single
factor that varies (according to the author's
ideological taste) from the inherent logic of
monopoly capital to the inevitable inco~etence of
public bureaucracy••.•. This book. on the contrary.
assumes that only by analysing the relationship
bet~en people and urbanization will we be able to
understand cities and citizens at the SaDe
time". (20)
In adopting this new perspective Castellfs was
responding to a number of critiques of his earlier
structuralist position which left little space for
an understanding of the structure of social
reI ations and social mobil isation processes <see,
for instance, C. G. Pickvance. 1975; and P.
Saunders, 1981). In this text, which is based on
a number of cross-cultural case studies, the
, urban' is not just regarded as the arena of
collective consumption but, fundamentally. within
the context of the city as 'a social product

- 29-
resul ting from confl icting social interests and
val ues' . Conflict wi thin cities takes place
between social cl asses, interest groups and
individuals over 'urban meaning'. In this context,
Castell s dra\VS attention to the significance of
local 'communities' as the focal point for urban
movement activity. Urban protest movements,
according to Castells, seem to develop around
three major themes:
"I. DeJDands Focused on collective consu.ption.
that is. goods and services directly or indirectly
provided by the state.
2. Def'ence of' cuI tural identity associated
with and. organised around a specif'ic territory.-
3. Political .abilisation in relation to the
state. particularly e.phasising the role of' local
govern:ment".[original emphasis] (21)
Therefore, in contrast to Castells's earlier
writings, urban social movements are not to be
judged in terms of their potential to produce
'effects' that transform the structure of social
relations but, rather, on their capabll i ty for
br i ning about a change i n ' urban meani ng' ;
" .•. here lies the most i.portant role of' urban
social movements. their very raison d' ei:;re as a

- 30-
distinctive actor: they are the collective actions
consciously aimed at :fundamentally IIIOdifylng the
city's role in society. or redefining the
historical aeaning of 'urban'. It is in this sense
that all the JM)veaents that ~ have studied are
IOaJor urban JDOvements". (22)
Despite this change in emphasis, Castell s
still focuses on very broad social reI ationshlps,
notably those between the movement, the urban
system, and the wider society, and so is incapable
of comprehending the social base and how urban
contradictions are translated into social action
(see, for instance. P. Mullins. 1987). Castells's
theoretical writings certainly have the benefit of
deconstructing the weaknesses inherent in
sociological studies based on around the concept
of 'community'. by indicating that class tensions,
including those organised around issues of
reproduction, have their origins in the economic
and pol i tical structures of society as a whol e.
However, collective action is always built by
social actors and what needs to be explained is
how movements form and how they manage to mobilise
individuals and groups around a collective
project. Or, as Foster has argued, to understand
how particular forms of social protest arise we

- 31 -
need to acknowledge that they originate within
historically and locationally specific situations:
..... to deal with real people caught and held
In particular historical circumstances, ~ need a
degree of definition about how existing levels of
popular culture and organisation enclose the gains
of past struggle". (23)
The only case where Castells comes close to
acknowledging the importance of social base
characteristics is in reference to the 1915
Glasgow Rent Strike:
" ••• Of the five maJor .oveaents studied. only
the Glasgow Rent Strike appears as the expression
of a ~rking cl ass-based ~"saeial JDOveJDent. In all
other situations the urban IDObillsation either
brought together a variety of social classes
around a city vision, or expressed a cultural
subset of people. organised around classless lines
and mobilized around issues that only indirectly
relate to class po~r .•. ". (24)
The 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike, as Darner (1980)
rightly argues, was organised within a distinctive
working class milieu by 'organic intellectuals' of
the working class, with the support of various
I abour organisations, around a central issue of
reproduction: housing. Given this insight, it is

- 32-
all the more surprising that more attention has
not been paid to an analysis of the history of the
tenants' movement and housing struggles, in
comparison to the elusive search for urban social
movements. The only attempt to link the two issues
is Lowe's (1986) outl ine of the development and
disintegration of the tenants' movement in
Sheffield, which is contextualised in relation to
Castells's theory of urban social movements.
However, in rightly rejecting any of Castells's
theories of urban social movements to explain this
type of activity, Lowe provides his own obfuscated
account of events in Sheffield:
" .•. The councIl house tenants' -.,vement was
and remaIns rigidly locked into Its JRanual worker.
publ ic sector social base. and did not link at any
stage either to pr i vate sector tenants or to the
owner occupIers. What happened in Sheffield was
not a political class struggle but a fora of
polItIcal actIon based on the consumption
interests of public sector tenants which was, to
some extent, structured by a cl ass-defined social
mIlieu". (25)
Here we have a movement with a manual worker
social base structured by its class-defined social
milieu, but we are asked to consider the struggle

- 33-
solely in relation to 'consumption interests'.
This muddled account of the mobilisation of a
specifically located working class protest around
issues of reproduction arises from Lowe's
treatment of consumption issues as being wholly.
rather than relatively, autonomous. The discussion
of housing struggles contained in this
dissertation, particulalry chapter two and chapter
three, sugests that we need to return to a
formulation based on the concept of reproduction.
In order to avoid reverting to a funcionalist or
mechanistic use of the concept of reproduction we
also require a historical analysis of the I inks
between housing struggles and the specific sets of
social processes that hel ped to structure them
<see E. Pretece ill e, 1986) . Thi s ne~cessar i I Y
involves an account of how particular social
agents have organised themselves collectively
around housing struggles in response to state
intervention, and how they have been able to
enhance or resisit change.
IV. MAKING HISTORY: ORGANIC INTELLECTUALS AND
HOUSING STRUGGLES
"Men make their own history. but they do not
make it Just as they please; they do not Bake i t
under circumstances chosen hy themselves. but

- 34-
under circumstances di rectI y encountered, gi ven,
and transmitted f'roa the past. The tradition of'
all the dead generations weighs like a night-Bare
on the brain of' the living..... (26)
The tenants' movement in Glasgow initially
drew upon a rich asssociational I ife of diverse
mutual ist associations and I abour organisations
informed by socialist perspectives (see S. Darner,
1980 and 1990). For the past one hundred odd years
housing struggl es have remained at the centre of
the political class struggle in the city, as
Melling acknowledges in his discussion of the 1915
Rent Str ike:
" . . . Closer eXaBination of' ca..paigns such as
the rent strikes of west Scotland during the
War .. sugests that there is a longer and BOre
complex genealogy of' non-industrial struggles than
existing accounts allow. and that their
contribution to the shaping of' ~rking class
pol itics is as important as that of' ~rk-based
organisations ..•0 (27)
The evidence from post-War GI asgow suggests
that, the continuance of this rich history has had
a cumUlative effect on how tenants' organisations
and housing struggl es have developed within the
city in response to state intervention. Therefore,

- 35-
contrary to Cockburn's asserti on, struggl es over
issues of reproduction do not constitute a 'new
terrain of cl ass struggl e' (C. Cockburn, 1977) •
Class struggle in the terrain of reproduction,
particularly in relation to housing issues, has
formed a constant part of the working class
counter-hegemonic struggl e for social improvement
in many urban working class areas of Britain. (see
D. Byrne, 1982) • Unfortunately, as already
indicated, most of this activity remains • hidden
from history' .
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine
the hi story of the tenants' movement and hous i ng
struggles in one city. GI asgow, tracing their
development from the earl y post-War campaign
against the sale of council houses through several
phases to the present day when they are faced with
a fundamental restructuring of housing tenure. In
producing this history it is important to
acknowledge at this stage that there is a sub-text
contained within most of the general discussion
which draws on the writings of Gramsci in relation
to his discussion of 'organic intellectuals' and
his concept of , hegemony' (A. Gramsci. 1971> .
Whil e thi s i s not the pI ace to prov ide a full

- 36-
exposition of Gramsci s I ideas, it is essential to
indicate my use of this perspective.
In the Prison Notebooks Gramsci drew a
distinction between two fundamental types of
political control, where he contrasted the
functions of • domination' (direct physical
coercion) with those of , hegemony' (consent,
ideological control). By hegemony Gramsci meant
the permeation throughout civil society of an
enti re system of val ues, attitudes and beliefs
that, in one way or another. support the cl ass
interests of those who dominate it:
..... What \Ne can do, for the ..oment. is to :fix
t\olflO JaaJ or superstructural ' I evel s': the one that
can be called • civil society' • that is the
ensembl e o:f organislDS COllBDOnl y call ed • pri vate' •
and that o:f • pol itical society' or • the State'.
These t\olflO levels correspond on the one hand to the
:function o:f 'hegemony' which the do.lnant group
exercises throughout society and on the other hand
to that • direct do.ination' or co...a.nd
excerclsed through the State and , Juridical'
government. The :functions In question are
precisely organisational and connective. The
intellectuals are the dominant group's • deputies'

- 37-
excercising the subaltern functions of social
hegemony and pol itical govermaent·,. (28)
Thus, civil society and the state are onl y
partially seperate; they interpenetrate each other
in a variety of ways or, as Gramsci says, they are
'intertwined'. Hegemony in this interpretation is
a concept that is designed to assist us in
understanding society and, in particul ar, in
analysing the relation of forces within a society
at any particular moment. For example, the
tenants' movement is mainly concerned with winning
consent and to that extent is part of civil
society. Neverthel ess, to win this consent, the
tenants' movement may be i nvol ved i n a struggl e
with the state (if onl y at a 'local' level) or,
al ternat i vel y, could be drawn into the state.
Therfore, a counter-hegemonic tenants' movement
must have its own 'organic' intellectuals who have
the function of organisers:
" •.• One of the most important characteristics
of any group that is developing towards do.inance
is its struggle to assi.ilate and to conquer
'ideologically' the traditional intellectuals, but
this assimilation and conquest is made quicker and
JDOre efficacious the more the group in question

- 38-
succeeds in simultaneously el aborating its own
organic Intellectuals". (29)
Gramsci' s use of the concept of • organic'
intellectuals is normally utilised in reference to
the role of activists involved in • revolutionary'
parties (see, for instance, C. Boggs, 1976; and R.
Simon, 1982). However, as subsequent chapters make
clear, the tenants' movement in Glasgow has thrown
up its own • organic' intellectuals of the working
cl ass who have been i nvol ved ina wide range of
campaigns within the social and pol itical sphere
of civil society. Before providing an outl ine of
the structure of this dissertation, and in case
there is any doubt about this interpretation, it
is worthwhile letting one of these organic
intellectuals speak for themselve:
"C. ~. The point you tal k about: the time, the
effort, that is real I y crucial to tenants'
associations. How would you explain why people
became involved to the extent that they did?
C. W. It·s a difficult question to ans~r. But
as near as I can ans~r it. that to resort to
direct pol itical assistance I regarded as useless.
I~ any benefit could be derived politically. from
any organised pol itical party. i t had to be as a
by-product. The action, the Impact. had to come

- 39-
from people themselves who ~re sufficiently
articulate to see the issues and try to do
something about them and attempt to by education.
It sounds a bit bombastic to say these things but.
nevertheless. It is a piece of realism to say It.
Because, after all, how did you learn i t yourself?
You I earned yoursel f because you Ii stened or you
read and you saw certai n thi ngs and you real ised
that until you decided to do something they would
stay the same. You might not be successful but you
might obtain some satisfaction emotionally at
least, if' not intellectually. But you've tried
something and. if you can encourage others and
they in turn encourage you to continue to do It
with a sort of common aim. then your .are likely
to be successful the .are peopl e you get to do
that and you will derive more pleasure from it
with less hurt. if there is such a thing as hurt
in being unsuccessful. Because there's the
enthus i as_. the pleasure and pain from being
active and not sitting on your backside and
letting f'aceless po~r people impose things on
you. So, I would say that, to my mind. that was
the Justification for the hard work. the loss of
leisure. the deprivation of teaching your child,

- 4-0 -
and that was in co.aon with .any dozens of people
who were actively involved". (30)
As organic intellectuals, people involved in
the tenants' movement and other housing struggles
have not always • conquered' the dominant
ideologies of the state and it't s intellectuals,
but they have formed an important part of the
overall counter-hegemonic struggle of the working
cl ass for social improvement, which has been too
often ignored in academic studies of housing
issues ..
Therefore, this study was undertaken on the
premise that an understanding of the tenants'
movement and hous i ng struggl es requ i res a fresh
and more historically rigorous approach in order
to begin to comprehend the capacity they have for
influencing the structuring of housing provision .
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Research Note:
The study of the tenants' movement and
housing struggles is relatively difficult to
anal yse. Many tenants' associations do not keep
records of their activities over a lengthy period
and some of the people involved in specific issues
tend to curtail their involvement after such

- 41 -
campaigns have disintegrated. For instance, one
researcher who has attempted to study tenants'
associations has commented thus:
" . . . very I i t t l e has been written about them
and BUch of the evidence is in the oral tradition
of working-cl ass history. which does not easily
I end i tsel f to acade.i canal ys i s but is a very
deeply ingrained source pol itical
experience ..•1 (31 )
This researcher does not accept such an
elitist and narrow conception of the relevance of
oral history (see P. Thompson, 1978 for a full
defence of the oral tradition). Indeed, knowledge
of the two important campaigns discussed in
chapter two and chapter three onl y came to my
attention by way of the worki ng cl ass oral
tradition, .and this thesis would have been
weakened without such sources. Therefore, some of
the evidence contained in this dissertation draws
specifically on the knowledge of those who have
been involved in the tenants' movement in Glasgow
throughout the post-War years. Information on
housing management and the pol itical
administration within the city has also been
partly assembled through taped interviews.

- 4-2 -
However, this is not the only, or even main
source of' data collection that has been util ised.
A whol e sel ection of' newspapers, both local and
national, have been plundered in order to present
a wider representation of' the issues invol ved in
specif'ic campaigns. Various archives (The Broady
collection in Glasgow University I ibrary. the
Finlay Hart collection in Clydebank I ibrary, the
Gall agher Memorial library, the Gl asgow Room of'
the Mitchell library, Castlemilk library, and
Strathclyde Regional Archives) have been
consul ted. Many of' the documents stored in these
collections cover housing issues and. more
importantly, contain material on the tenants'
movement (minutes, leaf'lets. handbooks, letters
etc) which have been invaluable in completing the
analysis in individual chapters. The case studies
of' the GCTA and tenants' associations in
Castl emil k, while analysed by using methods
al ready mentioned, were mainl y studied by way of'
participant observation at a series of' meetings
over a period of one year (1989-90). By using a
diversity of' research methods, this study has
provided a comprehensive account of' the tenants'
movement and housing struggles in post-War
Glasgow.
- 4-3 -
The discussion begins in chapter one with an
historical outline of the development of housing
and housing management ideology in Glasgow. This
review and critique provides the essential
background information on housing conditions
within which housing struggles are necessarily
located. This chapter also provides an account of
the changes and continuities in housing management
ideology which are taken up again in chapter four
and five. Chapter two provides an account of two
earl y post-War housing struggl es: the squatters
movement and a campaign against the sale of
council houses in 1951-52. This is followed in
chapter three with a discussion of a rent strike
in 1958-59. The information contained in these
chapters calls into question the common assumption
that the tenants' movement were inactive during
the 1950s (J. Butt, 1983; and S. Lowe, 1986) .
Chapters four and five contain case studies of
tenants' associations in Castlemilk ( a massive
post-War peripheral housing scheme> and the GCTA
(the main city-wide federation of tenants'
associations). These latter two chapters provide
an evaluation of the contemporary tenants'
movement in relation to recent developments within
the local state and changes in national housing
pol icy. In this respect, they illustrate the

- 44-
attempts by the state, at both a local and

national level, to repress urban conflict and
, incorporate' tenants' associations through
'tenant participation' programmes.
**************************
- 45 -
INTRODUCTION-NOTES
1. F. Engel s (1973) p71. The report Engel s was
referring to was written by a Government
Commissioner: Jelinger Cookson Symons (1839 )
"Arts and Artisans at Home and Abroad". Edinburgh.
p116
2. Shiela Gilmartin, Dunagoil Care Group, quoted
in Sir Robert Grieve (1986) p17.
3. R. Eyerman & A. Jamison (1991), pl.
4. S. Lowe (1986), pp82 & 84.
5. P. Abrams (1982). pl04.
6. G. Simmel (1903). p
7. For a critique of Wirth's theory see H.J. Gans,
1968.
8. Maciver. <1917 ) Community: A Sociological
Study. p45.
9. R.M. Maciver and C.H. Page (1961). p9.
10. N. Elias and J.L. Scotson (1965) give a
description of similar events in their study in
the Mi dl ands. Also, see chapter four of this
thesis.
11. M. Young and P. Willmott (1957). p2.
12. R. Frankenberg, (1966). p214.

- 4-6 -
13. N. Dennis (1968) . p91.
14-. M. Bulmer (1985). p4-4-2.
15. E. Preteceille (1986) . pl4-8.
16. M. Castells <1977b). p61.
17. M. Castells <1978a>. p175.
18. M. Castells <1977a). p4-53.
19. M. Castells (1977a). p378.
20. M. Castells (1983). pXVI.
21. M. Castells <1983 >. pXVIII.
22. M. Castells (1983) . p71.
23. J. Foster <1979 >. pilL
24-. M. Castells (1983). pp67-68.
25. S. Lowe (1986) . p113.
26. K. Marx <1969>- p360.
27. J. Melling (1983). p6.
28. A. Gramsci <1971>. p12.
29. A. Gramsci (1971). pl0.
30. Taped interview with Mr Chas Watters, 14--3-89.
Mr Watters was involved in the rent strike
discussed in chapter three.
31. S. Lowe (1986). p85.

- 4-7-
CHAPTER ONE
HOUSING AND HOUSING IDEOLOGY IN
GLASGOW. 1866-1990
1.1 Introduction
The relationship between tenants'
organisations and housing management has become
central to most contemporary discussions of tenant
activities. The principal debates, in this
context, have revol ved around such concepts as
tenant participation, tenant control"
decentralisation and customer care in housing
management, tenant choice and so forth. Housing
management practice and ideology in GI asgow was
not responsive to these issues, in any
recognisable sense, until the late 1970s and early
1980s- much later, in some respects, than other
local authorities. (see Hambleton and Hoggett,
1987; and, Goodlad, 1988).
Therefore, to understand the practices,
principles and ideology which formed the
foundation of certain strategies adopted by the
housing department, it is essential to provide an
exposition of the ideology of housing management
as it has evolved historically, both within
GI asgow and at a broader level. Thi s i nvol ves an
analysis of problems as defined by housing

- 48-
management, the practices that were in operation
at specific periods, relating the whole discussion
to wider social and pol itical changes, and the
effect this had on the \VOrkings of the tenants'
movement in GI asgow.
Whi 1 e the emphas i s wi 11 mai nl y be on the
changes and continuities in housing management
ideology during the period under discussion. it
should become clear that there are significant
links between nineteenth and early twentieth
century private-sector housing management, inter-
war council housing management and the system of
council housing management which developed in
post-war GI asgow. This approach necessarily
requires an account of Gl asgow council housing
but, as this has been adequatel y provided
elsewhere, the discussion presented here will be
1 imi ted to those issues which seem reI evant (see
S. Damer, 1990; A. Gibb, 1983; and G. C. Mooney,
1988) .
1.2 Historical Overview
It is compulsory when beginning any discussion
of the origins of publ ic sector housing
management to refer to the • pioneering' work of
Octavia Hill in England in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. (I) As Hill's work is by

- 49 -
now fairly familiar to anyone with an interest in
housing issues, an interpretation of the main
characteristics behind the thinking associated
with Hill and her 'women evangelists' is presented
briefly, to emphasise the similarities as well as
the dissimilarities with early housing management
ideology in Gl asgow.
Starting in the 1860s, Octavia Hill
rehabil itated and managed a number of poor and
overcrowded properties in London. putting into
practice and developing her ideas concerning the
Job of a housing manager. Her first acquisition
was a sl um dwell i ng call ed 'Paradise PI ace', but
popularly known as Little Hell (see G. Darley,
1989). These and other slum properties were bought
by John Ruskin. who rec~ved 5 per cent return on
his investment- 'philanthropy at 5 per cent'- and
then passed the property on to Hill to manage.
Hill, it should be remembered, was vehemently
opposed to any form of public subsidy for working
class housing, and her philosophy of housing
management was intended to i nfl uence the small
I andl ords who owned the vast maJ or i t Y of wor ki ng
class housing in London. The strict but attentive
style of housing management which she favoured had
a strong affinity with social work and emphasised

- 50-
the importance of' personal contact between
landlord and tenant. Personal contact was,
however, on the basis of' her belief' about the need
to , educate' and , re-moral i ze' the , poorer
sections' of' the worki ng cl ass, or in her own
words:
"The people's homes are bad. partly because
they are badly built and arranged; they are
tenf'old worse because their habits and I ives are
what they are. Transplant them to-morrow to
healthy and commodious homes and they would
pollute and destroy the...... (2)
In this respect, Hill was very much in line
with the thinking of' her own class (see G.
Stedman-Jones, 1971). This • benevolent despotism'
was based on the bel ief' in the moral superiority
of' the middle and upper classes. a view which was
widely supported and disseminated in I ate-
Victorian Britain. (3). Hill and her associates
combined these ideas of' 'educating' the working
class with the role of' landlord to create a
paternalistic style of' housing management.
In Homes of' the London Poor, Hill outlined the
main aims and val ues on which her management was
based. Firstly. she wished to f'ree tenants f'rom a
'low class of' landlords and landladies'- who were,

- 51-
apparently, lax about collecting rents. Hill
considered this immoral, and she began to recruit
a number of middl e cl ass women as vol unteer rent
collectors and property managers. making a strict
insistence on the prompt payment of rent.
Secondly, she wanted to reI ieve tenants of • the
heavy incubus of accumul ated dirt'. and she got
women to clean passages in order to 'learn habits
of cl eanl i ness' Thi rdl y, she wanted to free
tenants from the corrupting influence of
'degraded' fellow lodgers. So she selected out the
'deserving poor' who, it was assumed, were more
1 i kel y to respond to her treatment and she al so
segregated the 'bad tenants' from the 'respectable
tenants'. Finally Hill wanted to rouse 'habits of
industry and effort' and she encouraged thr i ft
among people she literally regarded as her
tenants. This was to avoid any debts through
irregularity of work- a common experience for many
of London's worki ng cl asses. If they were
unsuccessful in following her example- and failed
to pay their rent- they would be promptly evicted.
While Hill's attempts to • improve' her
tenants went beyond rent collecting and doing
repairs (for instance, she provided a community
hall for her tenants with murals painted by Walter

- 52-
Crane and a pI ay area for the chil dren) it was
based on an individualistic notion of poverty and
an authoritarian style of housing management.
which reflected the belief in the moral
superiority of her own class. Her contribution to
the housing of the poor was inevitably minimal,
but she had an enormous influence on the housing
management prof ess i on, both through her wr it i ngs
and her training of other managers, primarily
women, in her methods. (4) But, her contribution to
local authority housing management practice is
disputed by some commentators:
..... Despite Octavia Hill's valuable pioneering
work in this field. housing aanage-.ent was. in
ef'f'ect. reinvented in the 1920s as a wholly
administrative activity centred on local
government and I acking the .oral istic overtones of
her aethod. tI
(5)
In general terms this statement may be
considered factual, but it is historically
inaccurate if we consider the overall debate
within the housing management profeSSion at this
time and, more particul arl y. if we consider the
way in which housing management in Glasgow
actually progressed during the years under
consideration in this chapter.

- 53-
The first professional association, the
Association of Women Housing Workers, was created
in 1916 by women trained by Octavia Hill in the
early twentieth century. The Society of Women
Housing Estate Managers was formed out of this
group in 1932 (changing its name in 194-8 to the
SOCiety of Housing Managers>. The Institute of
Housing had been formed in 1931, by predominantly
mal e local authori ty housing managers. These two
groups remained separate untll their amalgamation
in 1965. when they became known as the Instltute
of Housing Managers (in 1976 the name reverted
back to the Institute of Housing). (6) In the 1920s
and early 1930s the newly emerging housing
authorites, taking on the task of management for
the first time, began to question the
appropriateness of the organisation and practices
of management, which were seen as a necessary
feature of the provision of public housing. The
debate revolved around two competing views on the
role of housing management as prOViding properly
trained staff (at la Octavia Hill), or whether
housing management should have a 'welfare role'
(the I. of H. vIew) . The resul t of these debates
was, perhaps understandably. that no one system of
local authority housing management emerged. But
some commentators, have continued to suggest that

- 54-
the st yl e of hous i ng management assoc i ated wi th
Octavia Hill did not prevail:
" ••.• Local authority housing JDanage:.ent has
continued to be a largely administrative activity,
in contrast to the personal. IBOrai istic and
authoritarian practices of' Miss Hill."(7)
This was certainly not the case in Gl asgow.
where an author i tar i an style of management
developed, with the personal and moralistic
practices necessarily included, owi ng much to
Octavia Hill but also able to draw upon a
pernicious Calvinistic moralism which has a
particular heritage amongst the Scottish
bourgeoisie.
1.3 The Background to Houstng Manage:.ent in
Glasgow
GI asgow has al ways been a city of paradoxes
and contradi ct ions. By the middle of the
nineteenth century Glasgow had achieved a
sUbstantial measure of economic prosperity, which
was founded on the heavy engineering industries
that grew up on the banks of the ri ver Cl yde.
These industries required massi ve workforces and.
as a direct result of this requirement, the city's
population grew from 359,000 in 1851 to 1,088,000
in 1931. The boundaries of the city had been

- 55-
extended from 5,603 acres in 1846 to 39,725 acres
<or over 62 square miles> by 1938. (8)
Behind this rapid growth there was a human
tale of misery and exploitation, which was nowhere
more apparent than in the housing condi tions. In
the process of the expansion 1 i ttl e thought was
gi ven to the housing needs of GI asgow' s growing
proletariat. (9) Glasgow's wurking class were
forced to live in appalling cramped conditions
with overcrowding, lack of air or light in
dilapitated tenement houses. As early as 1818
there had been an outbreak oY typhus fever in the
wynds and closes of Glasgow's slums, and
throughout the earl y part oY the century there
were periodic outbreaks oY epidemics such as
typhus, Yever and smallpox in the city. The web of
• social problems' arising from such a
concentration oY poor conditions meant that when
Glasgow's municipal authorities turned their
attention to them, housing and health were defined
as part of the same problem. (10)
Throughout the early nineteenth century there
were a number of Pol ice Acts passed in Glasgow
which contained clauses dealing with sanitary
provision in the city. However, it was not until
the middle of the century that the association

- 56-
hetween had heal th and had housing came to he
full y recogni sed. The 1840s and 1850s saw the
introduction of various Nuisances Removal Acts
which 'empowered' medical officers of health, as a
last resort, to prohihit the use for human
habitation of premises which were 'injurious to
heal th' . In 1842 the Report on the Sanitary
Conditions of the Lahouring Classes of Great
Br i tai n was issued. This report recognised the
links hetween the massing of populations in
enclosed areas, had housing and ill health. (11)
In 1846 Glasgow.Town Council used the
provisions of the various Nuisances Removal Acts
to acquire property in the High Street, Saltmarket
and Gorhals areas o-f the city. The first attempt
at slum clearance in Glasgow had hegun. In 1843 an
Inspector o-f. Cleansing was introduced and was
gi ven powers to prevent overcrowdi ng and to see
that houses and closes were kept ina 'cl ean
condition'. These powers had little practical
outcome and it was not until 1857 that puhlic
health was di-fferentiated as a special -function o-f
municipal government. In 1863 the -first Medical
O-fficer o-f Health-Dr William Tennant Gairdner- was
appointed, initially on a part-time basis. In 1866
Gairdner extended the • vol untary' scheme -for

- 57-
sanitary visitation, and organised large numbers
of volunteers to 'visit the homes of the working
people and to encourage cleanliness of persons and
of homes' . This idea was to become firmly
establ ished in the practice of the Corporation
housing management department in the twentieth
century, with the introduction of Nurse
Inspectresses.
In 1862 another City of GI asgow Pol ice Act
gave the authorities wider powers to deal with
overcrowding. through measuring the cubic contents
of a house. If the cubic contents were found to be
under 2,000 feet a 'ticket' was placed on the door
or stair wall, on which the cubic space and the
number of people allowed to reside within the
house was stated. This was based on 300 cubic feet
per adul t or two children under eight years of
age. These 'ticketed houses' were visited by
Public Health Inspectors- in those days known as
the Sanitary Police- between 11. 30pm and 5.00am
'for the purpose of discovering overcrowding' If
the I egal number was exceeded the tenants were
prosecuted. It was recognised by the authorities
that these tenants were not the 'respectable'
working class and therefore segregation became
part of the overall strategy of surveillance:

- 58-
..... the better cl ass of tenants avoid such
houses and even their neighbourhood. Consequently.
la~ords are always warned before tickets are put
up in :fresh localities. so that they JDay save the
reputation of their property by getting rid of the
overcr~ing tenants .•.•• (12)
The interests of' the I andl ords and the
policing of' Glasgow's poor seemed to have taken
precedence over the provision of' adequate housing.
Under the guise of' , inspecting houses f'or
overcrowding' houses were 'ticketed' according to
the 'character of the property' and the • character
of the tenant'. There were many houses which
I egall y coul d have been 'ticketed', but escaped
owi ng to the 'character of the tenant'. (13) The
segregation inherent in such a pol icy was to be
continued in later years by the corporations'
housing department, as was the authoritarian
methods associated with such an approach.
In an attempt to resolve the housing situation
in the city a special agency, the Glasgow City
Improvme~t Commissioners, was f'ormed. In 1866 the
first City Improvements Act was passed. Under this
Act the Lord Provost, Magistrates and City
Council, in their capacity as Imrovement Trustees,
were empowered to , purchase and clear away

- 59-
I nsani tary areas in the congested centre of' the
city', around Glasgow Cross. Thus, the Housing
Department became known as the City Improvements
Trust (CIT). The purpose of' the 1866 Act was
threef'old:
II [aJ To reJDOve the worst parts of 01 d GI asgow
(Cross; Trongate; Calton between London Road.
Great Hamil ton Street; Gorbal s- Main Street) and
to replace the Streets and improve the
a<iommodation by leasing sites or building

"
dwellings for working classes.
[b] to improve the communications of the area
In the force of three proposals for central
railway termini which might prevent new roads and
streets being laid after their completion.
[c] To acquire extra lands to re-house
d:l spl aced persons :from the overcrowded areas and
to form a H.E. Park (Alexandra Park) lands at
Kennyhill (H. E. ) 89 ac; Overnewton (W) and
Oatlands (S.E) southside. II (14-)
The CIT had the power to erect new houses on
the cl eared sl tes but, apart f'rom a f'ew Model
Lodging Houses, this was not taken advantage of'
until 1889, the land being f'eued to private
building speculators.
- 60-
The Glasgow Improvements Act of 1871 extended
the powers contained in the 1866 Act for the
demolition of property as well as 'to provide
housing for the working cl ass popul ation of the
city displaced by the clearances'. As a result,
the council built two 'model tenements' and a
men's lodging house in 1871. The lodging houses
were under the control of a superintendent, who
was supported by three warders. The notion of
social control contained in these titles was real.
many of the superintendents were ex-NCOs from the
Army or ex-detectives. (15) There were also a
number of women workers employed who 'came dai I y
to do the cl eaning'. This system of management,
based on a hierarchical structure and a sexual
division of labour, was to become more evident in
later developments. However, the financial crisis
of 1878, with the collapse of the City of Glasgow
Bank, put a stop to any investment in
housebuilding. The CIT were regarded as one of the
worst landlords in the city. with old property in
the scheduled areas merely being patched-up
instead of demolished.
In 1895 the Corporation of Glasgow was
invested with the powers and property of the
Improvement Trustees, and two years later a second

- 61 -
Improvement Act was passed, to enable the
corporation to 'clear and rebuild seven congested
and insanitary areas' and to erect houses for the
'poorest classes'. However, the re-housing of the
displaced tenants of the 1866 Act was regarded as
a matter for private enterprise and there was
considerable opposition to any suggestion that the
Trustees should erect new houses as a general
pol icy. It was not until twenty-two years after
the pass i ng of the 1866 Act that the Trustees
finally began to build blocks of flats for the
tenants who were displaced by demolition schemes.
Between 1850 and 1900 private enterprise built
over 100,000 houses in Glasgow's 'inner city'-
mainly 1-2 bedroom flats in 4-storey tenement
blocks. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, ill-health
and poverty were characteristic of much of this
'inner-city' area. On the other hand, only 2, 199
houses were buil t by the corporation under the
Improvement Acts. The responsibility for managing
corporation properties was handed over to outside
factors, who colI ected rents and attended to any
repairs. However, in 1892 a new management system
was devised and a General Manager was appointed to
take over the supervision of the properties of the
CIT. Below the manager a number of caretakers were

- 62-
appointed. The caretakers (l ater to become known
as • Resident Fact.ors·) were responsibl e for the
daily inspection of the property in which they
Ii ved. and were • brought into close contact with
the tenants'. The benefits of such a system of
management were fully recognised by the
corporation:
" . . . . This method of aa.na.geaent has proved to
be very satisfactory_ It has resulted in a
financIal savIng. and brought all the properties
and tenants directly under the control o~ the
corporatIon. II (16)
So by the end of the nineteenth century,
despite the fact that housing conditions for
GI asgow' s working class were abominabl e. a
rudimentary decentralised system of housing
management began to emerge. Thi s system drew on
the experience of pri vate factors, had a strong
moral educati ve el ement in the styl e of Octavia
Hill and worked on an authoritarian basis aimed at
social control through the policing of Glasgow's
working class in their place of abode and in the
dead of night.
By the end of this period the housing of
Glasgow's working class was fast becoming the most
important political issue in the city. In 1914-

- 63-
GI asgow had the most densl y popul ated area in
Europe, with 700,000 people resident within three
square miles of Glasgow Cross. Not surprisingly,
perhaps, the corporation still concerned
themselves with slum clearance but were not
concerned with the public provision of
h~using. (17) In 1916 the corporation set up a
small commi ss i on to investigate the , housing
problem' in the city. This commission consisted of
the City Engineer, the Medical Of'ficer of Health.
the Chief Sanitary Inspector, the Manager of the
CIT and 'men known to be famil iar with working
class housing in the ci ty' . This committee
directed much of its attention to • improving slum
areas'. However, they also decided to constitute a
Special Sub-committee of the corporation to
concentrate on housing matters, and from this the
Housing Committee of the Corporation of' Gl asgow
was establ i shed.
The Housing Committee combined action
regarding sl um cl earance with estimates of the
housing needs of the city. Their recommendations,
like those of the 1917 Royal Scottish Commission
on Housing, were prevented from being implemented
by the 1914-18 War. It was not until 1919 that
Parliamen.t passed the Housing <Town Planning)

- 64-
(Scotland) Act, which established the principle of
state subsidy for housing for the general needs of
the working class, a notion first mooted
officially by the 1917 Royal Commission, and
fought for by Glasgow's men and women in the 1915
Rent Strike. (18)
The 1919 Act required each local authority to
give certain particulars regarding the existing

{f\
acco~dation in its areas and an assessment of the
number of new houses which woul d be required to
make adequate provision for any shortages which
were found. Prior to 1919 the Housing Committee of
the Corporation had been advised by the City
Engineer on housing matters and the practical work
in connection with this had been undertaken by his
department. When the new responsibil ities under
the 1919 Act were laid upon the corporation, it
was realised that the question of housing was one
involving a considerable amount of specialised
work and it was decided that a sepdrate
organisation should be created by the corporation
to deal with housing matters. In September 1919
the Housing Department of the Corporation was
created. The then Chief Sanitary Inspector, a Mr
Peter Fyfe, was appointed the first Director of

- 65-
Housing. Nevertheless, the City Engineer was to
remain a fairly powerful figure. (19)
The Housing Department's work in the immediate
Inter-War period consisted of estimating the
housing needs of the city, and the building of new
dwell I ngs. In the Housing Committee's first
estimate, made in 1920, the number of new houses
requ i red was put at 57, 000- the numbers game had
begun. In fact, between 1920 and 1939, the
corporation erected over 50,000 new houses and an
extra 10,000 had been built by private enterprise.
About 30 per cent of the corporation's output of
houses were erected in sl um-cl earance schemes in
the 01 der parts of the city under the Housing
Act~ s of 1923 and 1930; and a further 46 per cent
in the new housing schemes such as Carntyne,
Mosspark and Knightswood on greenfield sites on
the outskirts of the city.
However, the city's new housing schemes were
not all of the same standard. The i nter-\tJar
housing schemes were stratified into three groups
based on the rentals charged, irrespective of the
types of houses built. The three groups were named
, Rehous i ng' , , Intermediate' and 'Ordinary'. The
'rehousing' schemes, like Blackhill and Moorepark,
had particularly low rentals because of the higher

- 66-
subsidy that was provided under certain Housing
Acts- the 1930 and 1935 Acts. The latter aimed at
, de-crowdi ng' and the former to sl um-cl earance.
, Rehousi ng' schemes were built for tenants who
were to be rehoused from slum clearance areas, or
for those tenants who required houses but whose
income was below a fixed minimum. On the other
hand, 'ordinary' houses, built under the 1919 Act
to meet the .. general needs of the working cl ass",
were let at much higher rents despite the fact
that the Act did not require rent levels to be
"economic". Put simply, the 'ordinary' houses were
let to a certain strata of the working class
which, in general, meant cl erks, busi nessmen,
school~teachers and professionals., with the total
excl us ion of peopl e in unski 11 ed or semi -ski 11 ed
work and very few skilled workers. In 1933 the
Housing Committee introduced an , Intermediate'
cl ass of houses, for those who did not 'qual ify'
for 'rehousi ng' houses and who were unable to
afford the rental charged for • ordinary' houses.
In short, the allocation of houses I ed to the
spatial segregation of Glasgow's working class
population in addition to the social segregation
reflected in the class structure (see S. Damer,
1991> .
- 67-
On an organisat ional level. there was a
distinct division of responsibil ity between the
Housing Department and the City Improvements
Department during the initial period when the
housing department was formed. The Manager of the
City Improvements Department was responsibl e for
factoring all City Improvements property. as well
as the municipal houses built by the housing
department. The Manager of the City Improvements
Department, and not the Director of Housing. was
responsible for the letting of Corporation houses,
which he (and it was always a male) carried out in
accordance with the stratified plans devised by
the Housing Committee. The Director of Housing. on
the other hand, was responsible for carrying into
effect the Housing Committee's decisions on all
matters affecting the provision of new houses. The
Housing Department was responsible for the
acquisition of the necessary land for housing. the
design of the houses themselves, the layout of the
housing schemes, the supervison and construction
of the houses by direct labour. In short, the
Manager of the City Improvements Department let
and factored the houses and the Director of
Hous i ng was respons i bl e to the Housing Committee
for the provision of new houses and their
maintenance. This underlying balance of

- 68-
administrative power often led to protracted
inter-departmental disputes over the development
and design of housing schemes. (20) These disputes
continued into the immediate post-war period.
So far we have been mainly concerned with the
overall structure of the housing department.
However, some of the internal workings of the
department provide useful insights into the
ideology and practices of housing management in
GI asgow in this period. As we have seen, the
beginnings of housing management can be traced
back to the work of Octavia Hill and her
associates. The relationship between Hill and 'her
tenants', despite claims to the contrary, was one
that was often repeated by local authority housing
management departments, and was described by her
biographer thus:
"Octavia had def'lned her business relation to
her tenants as one of • perfect
strlctness· •••.•.• the word Octavia used to express
her ideal l' or the personal reI at lonshi p bet~en
herself and her tenants • perfect
respectfulness· •.• "(21)
In Glasgow • strictness' was an aphorism which
working cl ass tenants came to understand as the
mainstay of housing management in the city. The

- 69-
raids on 'ticketed' houses. mentioned above. was
only one aspect or a system or housing management
which developed over the years, in which a
reI ationship or • perrect respectful ness' was the
guiding principle. The Municipal Commission Report
of 1904 made this evident. with regard to the need
for Caretakers:
" ••• Mr Menzies says, •I think a caretaker is a
very valuable o~~icer in connection with any
housing sche.e. He both reduces disorder aJaOngst
the tenants and prevents tenants trouhling each
other, and sees that the closes are kept in clean
and proper order _ I don't think a. hous i ng sche.e
ror the poor or dishoused popula.tion is properly
equipped unless there is a caretaker . . . . "(22)
According to this witness a roving social
worker-cum-health inspector was required to keep
certain sections of Glasgow's working class in
order in their place or abode. It was not long
before such a practice was adopted by the
corporation. In 1923 the first post-War slum
cl earance scheme was opened at Hamil tonhill. The
corporation decided to monitor the response of the
tenants to their new housing conditions. and
regular inspection or the houses was carried out,
initially by a Public Health nurse from the Public

- 70-
Heal th Department then by a "Nurse Inspectress"
appointed by the Housing Department. Visits were
made to all the houses in the scheme on a regular
basis, with special attention being given to those
'found in a dirty condition, to which repeated
visits were made'. At this time there were also
resident caretakers in Hamil tonhill and other
schemes responsible for rent collection and
general supervision of tenants, but confusion
arose concerning the respective duties of the
inspectress and the resident caretakers.
A report in August 1927. by a special sub-
committee on Insanitary Areas, helped to clear up
the confusion with the appointment of a special
officer attached to the Heal th Department. This
Nurse Inspectress. employed by the City
Improvements Department, was the first of what
were to become commonly known as 'Green Ladies',
and much later Housing Visitors (see S. Darner,
1991. for three categories of 'Green Ladies'). The
role of the nurse inspectress was to I exercise
intimate supervisory duties over the less
satisfactory tenants'. (23) The powers accorded to
the corporation to carry out such inspections were
allowed under both the Glasgow Corporation
(Police) Order Act, 1904, Section 9; and Section

- 71-
56 of the Housing <Scotland) Act, 1925. The former
Act gave authority for a sanitary inspector to
deal summarily with houses, bedding or furniture,
found to be in a 'dirty condition', and to issue
notice 'on the spot' to the occupier to clean the
house within twenty-four hours, under a penalty.
The latter Act enacted that 'houses provided under
this Act shall be open at all times for inspection
to the Local Author it Y or to any dul y author i sed
officer of the Local Authority'. Therefore, the
state, at both the local and the national level.
supported this perniciOUS intrusion into the homes
of working class Glaswegians.
As a means of sorting out the 'unsatisfactory'
tenants from the rest the nurse inspectress graded
slum clearance houses in terms of cleanliness and
order, and seperated them into three different
categories- , cl ean, , fair' and 'dirty'. Not
surprisingly, the 'clean' houses provided the
nurse inspectress with 'complete satisfaction'.
Houses in the 'dirty' category accounted for 10
per cent of the total houses under inspection in
1927, and the nurse inspectors' attitude to these
tenants is worth quoting in full:
"There reJDains a group. which varies in the
different schemes and which may be roughly

- 72-
computed at about 10 per cent. who JDay be regarded
as dif'f'icul t or even incorrigible tenants. This
may seem a high percentage. but-it may be pointed
out that this percentage does not apply equally
throughout all the schemes; in one or t~ of' the
small er schemes the percentage of' thi s cl ass is
lower or does not exist. A very great deal of'
attention has been given to this group, and af'ter
the experience I have had I am satisf'ied that the
results of' repeated visitation have had the ef'f'ect
of' removing a number or what at rirst sight seemed
to be incorrigible tenants into a h1gher category.
the ~rk of' endeavouring to ia.press tenants of'
this group is slow, and when one goes f'ully into
the cases and learns the individual history of' the
f'amil ies some I eniency BlUst be extended towards
them. In practically every case there is a
def'inite cause f'or their non-progress, usually
illness, low mental ity. proround ignorance,
pregnancy, child birth. physical disabil ity. and
in a f'ew cases alcoholism". (24)
There are a number of' important pOints
concerning this ideology about the "undeserving
poor" which these urban gatekeepers operated with.
Firstly, the Judgement about whether a house was
'clean', 'fair' or 'dirty' seemed to lie solely

- 73-
wi th the nurse i nspectress. though supported as
corporation policy, which presumably meant that it
was her own standard oC • cleanliness' that she was
imposing on working class tenants- a powerCul role
indeed! Secondly. as the above quotation makes
clear, her belieC in her own 'educational' crusade
led her to adopt a victim-blaming-ideology to
support the general bel ieCs about the need Cor
'improvement' amongst poor tenants which was part
oC a dominant perspective accepted by middle class
proCessional s.
This subjective, even arbitary, Judgement was
never JustiCied. It was sustained in a situation
documented in numerous oCCicial reports on housing
conditions, where there were two Camilies sharing
the same two-roomed house, shortage oC sani tary
facil ities in many houses, a chronic shortage oC
decent houses across the city and poverty on a
wide scale. In this situation Glasgow corporation
decided that what the tenants of the city real I y
required was discipline and regimentation into the
standards set by the nurse inspectresses. The
total number oC houses in the slum clearance
schemes that were under the supervision of the
nurse inspectors in 1935 was 10,576, situated in
57 'rehousing' schemes. (25) However, the number of

- 74-
houses that were recorded as • dirty' amounted to
4-4, a mere O. 4- per cent of' the total. Theref'ore.
despite the miniscule numbers invol ved. these
strategically placed "urban gatekeepers" (R. Pahl.
1975) were driven by a powerf'ul ideology which was
conf'used and contradictory but had real
consequences for a number of Glasgow's tenants as
well as setting an example to others ..
Unlike the Octavia Hill system of housing
management, where all the duties were carried out
by one person, Glasgow corporation had a number of
off'icials 'supervising' council tenants throughout
the 1920s and 1930s. The other important officials
in this context were the Resident Caretakers,
I ater to become known as Resident Factors. The
resident factors were attached to the CIT. the
house-letting department of the Corporation. They
colI ected rents, looked af'ter repairs complaints
and, in co-operation with the nurse inspectors.
ensured that 'windows and common stairs were
thoroughly washed'. The resident factors dealt
with the collection of' rents etc f'rom tenants of
'intermediate' and 'rehousing' schemes only. while
tenants of 'ordinary' schemes were trusted to make
such payments to the Head Of'f ice of the CIT, at
that time situated in the Trongate. Being the sort

- 75-
of peopl e they were, the resident factors al so
collected payments in respect of the hire purchase
of furniture from tenants in 'rehousing' schemes,
kept a list of defaulters and informed hire
purchase companies of tenants who were a • bad
risk' . (26)
Each resident factor was provided with a house,
free of rent and rates, in the scheme where they
worked, and 'Were thereby 'Well known to all
tenants. They dealt with an average of 500/600
intermediate and rehousing houses, and were linked
to Head Office via a supervisor. who they reported
to daily. From collecting rents through to
evictions, the resident factors operated a system
where Glasgow's council tenants • knew their
pI ace' These individuals held a noose over the
heads of Glasgow's council tenants in the shape of
their 'own bible': Court Action. It was a noose
that was to be tightened on many occasions after
the Second World War, as we shall see in the next
section dealing with this period.
1.~.Houslng Management In Glasgow 19~5-1970:
If • • • the hous I ng probl em ., or the lower i ncoJae
groups In this country has not been sol ved since
the Industrial revolutlon."(27)

- 76-
Aneurin Bevan was referri ng in the above
quotation to the housing situation in Britain at
the end o£ the Second World-War. The housing
situation in Glasgow in this period, while not
unique, was in many ways worse than that whi ch
prevailed in other British and European
cities. (28) To understand the changes in housing
management in post-War GI asgow, we need to be
reminded of the enormity of the situation
regarding housing conditions in the immediate
aftermath of the War. The expansion and changing
function of the role o£ housing management must be
located in the context of the changing situation
regarding slum clearance. the building of the
peripheral schemes. 'comprehensive redevelopment'
and the building of high rise blocks of flats.
Although housing management practices were slow to
change, we have to contextualise them in this way,
as many of the justifications for the adoption of
new ideas in the 1970s and 1980s constantly refer
back to the failures of this period and the
lessons which were learned by housing management.
Between 1919 and August 1939 of the total
houses buil t by GI asgow corporation. 25,537 were
tenement houses, 15,552 were £1 atted four-in-a-
block houses, and 8.227 were cottage type houses.

- 77-
In the immediate post-War period the Housing
Committee concentrated on constructing three and
four-apartment houses. The Housing Coromi ttee. it
should be remembered, was responsible for all
policy decisions on housing matters affecting the
city. During the War years Glasgow corporation's
role in building new permanent houses was
seriously curtailed, due to shortage of labour and
material s. Between 194-0 and 194-5 only 4-,882
permanent houses were completed by the
corporation. (29) The increasing pressure on the
housing accomodation '"

/I
in the city was exacerbated
by the I ack of repairs that was carried out to
existi ng dwellings. The I atter factor I ed to a
steady deterioration in a number of properties.
The situation for many people in the city was
grim, to put i t mildly. As official reports noted:
"It is estiJDated that some 100.000 houses will
require to be buil t to replace unfit houses. to
relieve overcro~in8', and for general needs"'. (30)
Therefore, at the end of the War, housing
remained the 'I argest publ ic heal th probl em' in
the city. There were no 'homes for the heroes'
and, as the discussion in chapter two reveals,
GI asgow' s working cl ass had to struggl e for the
continuance of the provision of council housing.

- 78-
Glasgow still had the unenviable reputation o:f
contai ni ng some o:f the worst sl urns in Western
Europe. The problems :faced by working class people
in the city seeking a decent :form of' shelter
remained acute. (31) However, council housing had
become a subsidised social service by 194-5, and
the corporat i on had acqu i red the power, through
the house-letting system, to determine the social
composition of' large areas o:f the city.
The immedi ate response to the economi c and
housing problems in Glasgow came in the :first
major ef':fective planning document :for the Greater
Gl asgow area, The CI yde Vall ey Regi onal PI an o:f
194-6. (32) The plan covered not only the Clyde
Valley, but also the county of' Ayrshire to the
south west. However, the main concern o:f this
plan, :for our purposes, was the recommendation
that there should be a planned decentralisation o:f
both population and industry f'rom Glasgow, a
I arge-scal e restructuring of' the housing and
labour markets. Glasgow's overspill problem,

c1\
estimated at 250,000, was to be accomodated by
f\.
housing schemes on the 'edge' of' the built-up area
and within and beyond the green belt in New and
Expanded Towns; 'overspill reception areas'.

- 79-
The Clyde Valley Plan had been prepared under
the auspices of an advisory committee. convened by
the Secretary of State for Scotland in 1943,
contai ni ng representati ves from all the region's
local authorities. Glasgow corporation, mainly
through the Master of Works and City Engineer
Robert Bruce, objected to the plans initially (he
resigned in 1947) and argued against any loss of
land within the city's boundaries for the proposed
'green belt' (see S. Damer. 1990). However. by the
1950s the corporation had come to accept the role
of East Kilbride (set up in 1947) and supported
the idea of the other New Town at Cumbernaul d
(designated in 1956).
By the early 1950s the housing situation in
Glasgow remained desperate. The house waiting list
had stood at around 90.000 famil ies in 1949, and
continued to grow. (33) .As Bruce had indicated in
his own plan. all of the people who needed
rehoused could not be accomodated in the
'overspill' plans highlighted in the Clyde Valley
Regional Plan. So from the late-1940s there was a
10 year period of intense development of the four
large peripheral schemes. While some of these
schemes contained a significant proportion of
cottage-type dwellings, 1 ike the inter-War

- 80-
schemes, the trend was to three and four-storey
tenement fl ats. These peripheral working class
schemes absorbed over 10 per cent of Gl asgow s
population, and by 1979 Castlemilk contained 9.752
houses, Drumchapel 10,346 houses, Easterhouse
14,961 houses. and Pollok 11,528 houses with a
total population of 160,000(34) They came to be
epitomised in the words of Glasgow
comedian/folksinger Billy Connolly as: "deserts wi
windae's".
They had been built to very high density and
there was a shift to more one-apartment and three-
apartment dwellings in these schemes. Little
consideration had been given to the needs of the
i ncomi ng tenants to these schemes. and there was
minimal provision of amenities and community
facilities. As chapter four reveals, the struggle
by tenants' organisations to have such facilities
provided began almost immediately the houses were
occupied. The creation of a more humane
environment has been a recurring theme in much of
the official literature on the , per i pheral '
schemes, and recent developments in Glasgow
suggest that some of these schemes will have a
much higher profile in the imagery of the policy-

- 81 -
makers than has hitherto been the case, a point we
will return to at a later stage.
In the mid-1950s there was an acute shortage
of land and a growing awareness that the policy of
building houses on what vacant land was avaIlable
on the periphery of the city was not solving
Glasgow's chronic housing problems. Therefore,
around this period, there was an important policy
shift towards those living in unfit properties
throughout the city. In 1957 the corporation began
its post-War sl um cl earance programme wi th the
'comprehensive redevelopment' of a site in the
Hutchesontown/Gorbals district of the city. The
programme of 'comprehensive redevelopment' was
extended to other areas of the city (Govan,
Royston, Townhead, the Calton and Springburn> and
whol e tenemental neighbourhoods were demol ished.
The people who were displaced by this process,
like their grannies and grandpas before them, had
little say in the actual outcome. (35)
'Participation' in decision making was a long way
off.
In spite of the overspill policy. the building
of peripheral schemes and , comprehens i ve
redevelopment' • Glasgow was still faced with a
chronic housing shortage in the late 1950s and

- 82-
earl y 1960s (see, for exampl e, J. B. Cullingworth,
1968). The problem was apparently exacerbated
with the scarcity of building land in the city,
though the abundance of new off ice blocks in the
city gives a clearer indication of the
corporation's priorities. Neverthel ess, in an
attempt to resolve the situation the corporation,
in response to the new subsidy regulations,
decided to erect a number of mul ti-storey blocks
of flats, the first of which were Moss Heights in
Cardonal d which were compl eted as earl y as 1953.
By 1982 321 high-rise blocks had been buH t in
Gl asgow, ranging from 8 to 31 storeys. In 1986
fl ats in mul ti-storey blocks amounted to 24-,94-9.
or 14-.79 per cent of the District Council's
hous i ng stock. In some districts of the city
mul ti-storey fl ats accounted for 36.07 per cent
(Springburn) and 39.68 per cent (City North) of
the housing stock. (36) Obviously, the 'streets in
the air' had caught the imagination of the
planners and politicians, and Glasgow's history of
tenemental I iving was exp/llll&ited to promote high-
rise living (P. Worsdall 1979-). By the beginning ..
of the 1970s the drastic demolition and clearance
approach and the building of high-rise housing
became increasingly unacceptable, both politically

- 83-
and economically. as one ex-leader of the Council
put it in 1974:
"In Glasgow we will not be building any DIOre
high flats after this. It is Just not worth the
candle. We have had a large number of complaints
from both young and old people. The planners
should have told us about the difficulties before
they were built- but they did not. we had to find
out for ourselves •.• They are socially
undesirable. II (37)
It was not the planners, and few of the
politicians. but Glasgow's council tenants who
suffered the consequences of these • socially
undesirable' buildings. However, it should be
remembered that it was the major construction
companies who were the real ben~ficiaries of this
phase of council house-building (P. Dunl eavy,
1981). It is somewhat ironic that these companies
prof i ted to such an extent from the 1 ast mass
house-building phase in post-war Britain. But it
is against all of these background factors that we
need to locate certain changes in housing
management practice in Glasgow during the same
period. This should also assist us in
contextual ising later shifts in policy orientation
and ideology in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

- 84-
The housing department in the immediate post-
War years was under the control o£ the Director o£
Housing and his Deputy the Assistant Director.
Below them a chief oft~icial was in charge of the
activities o£ the various sections o£ the housing
department- Civil Engi neer i ng. Archi tecture,
Surveying and the Clerical section. In addition to
this the corporation had, since 1921, developed
its own Direct Labour Organisation. This section
expanded rapidly in the post-War years, even
though the majority o£ corporation houses in the
city had been built by private contractors. While
we are not particularly concerned with other £orms
of public rented housing, it is worth pointing out
that from 1937 onwards (to April 1989) the
Scottish Special Housing Association took on the
responsibility of providing rented housing in the
city. (see chapter three). The SSHA was not a

n
housing association, in the coventional sense, but
1\
was funded directl y by the Scottish Office and
ef£ectively in£luenced by its authority. The SSHA
took applicants £rom the corporation's waiting
I ist when considering appl icants and, there£ore,
was to become an important source of housing £or
some of Glasgow's working popul ation. The

- 85-
corporation also '~actored' some o~ the SSHA
hous i ng. (38)
The City Improvements Department operated a
points scheme, as early as 1942, based according
to the year in which the application was made and
the degree o~ overcrOwding, as part o~ the letting
regul ations. In 1944 the corporation revised the
letting regulations. It was agreed that the degree
of need of the appl icants was to be the onl y
determining ~actor. However. it was also decided
to insert a residential qualification into the
regul ations. A prospective householder, or his
wife, required to have resided in the city ~or at
least ten years be~ore being considered for
housing accomodation. There were also two main
categories o~ applicants which were to be accepted
on the waiting list- overcrowded ~amil ies, and
newly married and homeless. The ~ormer category
were to be allocated approximately 90 per cent o~
the avaliable accomodation, and the remaining 10
per cent were to be allocated to the latter
category. (39) In other words. this was a sys1tem
of allocation based on priority groups and a
points sytem ~or grading applications. This
allocation system existed, with some minor changes
in categorisation, into the mid-1960s and the

- 86-
points system was not finally overhauled until the
early-1980s. (see chapter five).
This was the allocations policy as officially
documented. But to understand the operations of
such a system we must return to the rol e of the
nurse inspectors and the resident factors, who
were ultimately responsible for administering it
on a day-to-day basis. The important point that is
being re-emphasised here is that, like the inter-
War per i od, the hous i ng management department's
relationship with council tenants was mainly on an
individual basis during this era. The ideology
behind this individualistic approach was both
oppressive and regulatory. The consequences of
such a housing management strategy were also
divisive. with strict selection polici.es PlJtting
the , incorrigibl e' tenants into the lowest
standard of hous i ng.
By 194-4 GI asgow corporation had 65 resident
factors, 6 supervisors. 6 full-time and 13 part-
time • health visitors', the latter were trained
nurses involved in the supervision of mothers and
new-born babies. The resident factors were based
in both i ntermedi ate and rehousing schemes,
whereas the nurse inspectors were responsible for
the visitation of tenants in the latter schemes.

- 87-
The resident factors collected rents door-to-door
or payment could be made at their house, where a
room was fitted out as an office or in some cases
a hut was provided. Ordinary scheme tenants were
still trusted to pay their rents on a regul ar
basis and never suffered the discipline which re-
housing or intermediate scheme tenants faced on a
regul ar basis. Each individual health visitor was
responsible for approximately 1,250 houses,
averaging over 5,000 visits a year. In April 1944,
at a special sub-committee meeting on letting. the
then sub-Convener of' the Housing Committee
<councillor J. McInnes> proposed a number of'
changes to this system. The main proposals
included the f'ol I owing:
"a)ma.king resident f'actors responsible f'or the
lodgement of' cash in the bank, theref'ore ending
the necessity of' attending Head Of'f'ice each
JDOrning. b)Additional employment of' health
visitors. and the extension of' the system of'
• visitation' to the • intermediate' schemes, c)As
health visiting ~ considered essentially a
woman's Job the SUbstitution of' the title heal th
visitor with f'emale health visitor, d)that before
individuals become tenants of' corporation houses
they be visited by a health visitor and: 'where i t

- 88-
is revealed that their house is not kept in a
reasonably clean and satisf'actory condition then
they should be made aware or where they f'all short
of' the desired standard and given the opportunity
of' improving'. e)Supervisors to be responsible f'or
the supervision of' the Division and dealing with
applications f'or transf'ers, complaints. condition
of' houses prior to re-Ietting etc". (4-0)
This proposal was met with a response from the
Manager of the City Improvements Department, the
City Chamberlain, and the Medical Officer of
Heal tho The manager of the City Improvements
Department approved of the expansion of the rol e
of the heal th visitors, and raised little
objection to rents being collected at district
level. However, the Medical Officer of Health,
whil e supporting the extension of the duties of
the housing visitors, objected to their services
being transferred from the heal th department to
the City Improvements Department on the grounds
that 'there was an important distinction to be
made between the functions of housing management
and the functions of the heal th department'. The
Justification for this sep~ration was based on his
view of the proper role of health visitors:

- 89-
"Each inspectress is given a certain area and
her ~rk consists of visiting. advising and
hel ping the f8.IDilies. It has been found that the
trained nurse is an acceptable person for this
medico-social function. It should be emphasised
that her functions are as much those of a housing
inspectress. and I regard it as essential that
they should be kept on this level. The health of
the family. particularly the women and children.
is and should be as much her concern as the manner
in which the house is used and kept"'. (4-1)
These differences were not me~ly semantic but
based on the belief that, under existing
legislation, the nurse inspectress's and heal th
visitors could best carry out the function of
aSSisting in the reproduction of Glasgow's working
class from within the Health Department. A special
meeting between the City Improvements Department,
the Divisional Sanitary Inspectors and the nurse
inspectors was held on the 31st of May 1944-, in an
attempt to resolve these differences. Out of this
meeting it was agreed that rent collecting was to
be changed to a district system, the nurse
inspectresses were to remain within the Public
Health Department, and that supervision was to be
extended to the intermediate schemes. The first

- 90-
two of these proposals were consequently accepted
by the Housing Conunittee, but the supervision of
tenants in intermediate schemes did not begin
until 194-9.
Under the provisions of the 194-9 Housing
(Scotl and) Act it became no longer necessary to
build council housing 'only for the working
cl asses' but, refl ecting the popul ism of Bevan,
council housing was now intended to be for all
cl asses (see M. Foot, 1975) . Gl asgow corporat ion,
responding to this change, decided that such large
areas as Drumchapel and Castlemilk should have
• di versified conununi ties' , and housing would be
provided on the basis of an economic rent.
Drumchapel and Castl emi 1 k were two of the 'new-
ordinary' schemes. and the superviSion of tenants
who were rehoused from slum clearance areas began
in 1955. The \\1Ork of the nurse inspectresses was
often presented, as in the above accounts, as a
necessary function of the Public Health
department. However, it is cl ear from the many
references in official reports and departmental
memo's to the 'incorrigible tenant', the 'dirty
tenant' or the 'unsatisfactory tenant', that a
conscious process of stigmatisation. supported by

- 91 -
of f i c i al dom, was t.aki ng pI ace. One exampl e of' the
prevailing wisdom will suffice:
"The dirty tenants are usual I y f'ound to be
irregular at paying rent and the children are the
most destructi vee Of'ten they are under the
supervision of' probation off'lcers and are ~ll
known to the pol ice. Most of' them are below par
mental I y and often they have 1 arge f'amilies. It
has been f'ound that the chief reasons for dirty
tenants are domestic ~rries. money ~rrles. wives
not getting a fair share of the husband's wages.
low mental standard, gambling, drink. criminal
history. and Just laziness". (42)
Glasgows Medical Officer of Health, applying
rhetoric similar to nineteenth century accounts of
the undeserving poor, the criminal classes, the
residuum, the submerged tenth or the
lumpenproletariat, was explicitly indicating that
housing management should be primarily aimed at
the 'underclass'. However. like most contemporary
academic discussions of the 'underclass·. this
account is both a-historical and based on little
or no systematic analysis, reverting to ideas
which locates the probl ems of society in a small
minority of individuals and families (see J.
Macnicol. 1987 and A. Walker, 1990). This notion

- 92-
has been popular throughout this century, and
Titmuss commented on a long but discontinuous
concern wi th:
" ••• a segment o-r the popul ation. supposed.! y
characterised by similar traits and thought to
represent a closed, pathological entity". (4-3 >
It was on the basis o~ such stigmatization of
a substantial section of Glasgow's council tenants
that the policy of selection and segregation,
which subsequently resulted in the identi~ication
o~ • dif~icul t to let estates'. was grounded. The
annual reports of the Medical O~~icer of Heal th
throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s contain many
simil ar references to the one gi ven above. These
reports continuousl y refer to the importance of
supervision ~or the • less satisfactory tenants',
and also, that these same tenants were more likely
to get into rent arrears than other tenants, a
view given academic credence by Brennan:
"In spite o-r the improvement in the reputation
of the Rehousing schemes there are still, of
course. some tenants who are prohl eJDS. and there
are still tenants who for one reason or another
are not able to pay the full rent. Very o-rten they
are the same people . . . . "(44->

- 93-
However, if we look at the actual figures
contained in the reports of the Medical Officer of
Heal th they do not fit with such assumptions. In
the annual report of 1958, for example, the
figures for houses under supervision were as
follows: a)Ordinary scheme houses: 6,433 houses
visited, of which 38 (0.6 per cent) were
classified as 'dirty', b)Intermediate scheme
houses: 5,075 visited, of which only 18 (0.35 per
cent) were classified as 'dirty', c)Rehousing
scheme houses: 14,910 visited, of which 89 (0.6
per cent) were classified as 'dirty'. Tenants who
were evicted, or left owing rent, in 1958 totalled
47. Of this group, the number whose house came
under the , dirty' category amounted to a
phenomenal 1! Of the 487 tenants who left
'voluntarily' in 1958 the number whose house came
under the 'dirty' category amounted to a mere 7.
1958 was not an exceptional year, and simil ar
figure are aval iabl e for most of this period(see
Reports of Medical Officer of Health). What is
significant is the importance the City Factors
Department (as the Housing Management Department
became known on the 28th June 1950) pI aced on
these factors and what it indicates about housing
management ideology in the early post-war years. A
discussion of this issue will follow the section

- 94-
on resident factors, as there are a number of
issues here which are reI ated to the debate over
housing management ideology.
The actual duties of resident factors \¥ere
discussed briefly in the previous section. These
duties remained much the same in the post-war
years. HO\¥ever, not only was there an expansion in
the number of res i dent factors but they began to
become more concerned with rent collection and,
more specificall y, rent arrears. Despite the
qual i tat i ve changes in the new schemes the local
state ensured that the constant policing of
tenants continued. By 1959 the City Factors
Department was factoring 111,779 d\¥ellings
throughout the city, and was by then employing 386
staff. At the top of this administrative structure
was the City Factor and his Deputy with 6 District
Offices, where 58 District Inspectors, District
Supervisors and resident factors \¥ere
employed. (45)
Resident factors \¥ere responsible, on average,
for 600 tenants on month! y tenancies. Rents \¥ere
either paid at the factor's small local office or

I
collected at the tenants house, sometimes on a
weekly basis. They were also responsible for
inspecting properties; dealing initially with

- 95-
appl ications from the tenants for transfers and
exchanges, I iasing with the nurse inspectresses.
the Pol ice department, the Chil drens department
and where necessary bodies such as the R. S. P. C. C.
etc; deal with repai rs and 'endeavours to deal
amicabl y to adjust mattters in dispute between
tenants' (46) Their role was, quite simply, to
pol ice, discipline and re-moralize the lumpen
sections of Glasgow's working class who had moved
from slum-clearance areas to the new post-war
schemes.
Thus, a thoroughly efficient system of
decentralised housing management, based on
functional differentiations and an authoritarian
ideology with a long ancestry, existed in Glasgow
long before 'decentralisation' became an issue for
academics and policy makers. One of the most
important, but rarely documented, powers that
resident factors had was control over 'their
tenants', as one former resident factor described
the situation:
"The Resident Factors were introduced under
the City Improvements Trust. mainly in
Intermediate and Re-housing schemes, poorer areas.
This was a~ter the First World War. We were
treated as wee Go~ 1$. The tenants k.new that he was

- 96-
a po~rf'ul f'igure in terJDS of' access to housing.
Their responsibilities including collecting rents,
allocations and so f'orth. Their was no real
prof'essional training provided f'or the Reident
Factors. Apart f'rolD three days trai ni ng at the
beginning. and reporting to a Supervisor. they
~re lef't to themsel ves. Ho~ver. in JOOst cases.
they had previous experience in the Job as private
factors ". (47)
The main reason that resident factors were
regarded as "wee GodS a" was undoubtedl y reI ated to
their power to enforce a warrant sale on tenants
in arrears of rent. The power of warrant sales and
evictions are the most overt authoritarian methods
of housing management that have existed this
century. The fact that this process in Glasgow,
which prevailed into the 1970s, has remained
undocumented is a mystery. For this was no minor
management strategy, to be used only in special
cases. In 1957 6,900 formal notices terminating
tenancies were issued to , intermediate' and
'rehousing' scheme tenants, which was followed by
1,4-00 actions in court and the obtaining of 900
ejection decrees. (4-8) By 1959 court actions for
rent arrears had risen to 4,600. (4-9) The number of
council tenants who were to come up against this

- 97-
form of housing management increased on a yearly
basis, By 1971 the number of I court actions' had
increased to 21,170. Of these, 16,562 decrees were
obtained, 1,895 tenants , absconded' • and 4-03
tenants were evicted. (50) The statistics involved
in this type of action, when taken from the late
1950s to the late-1970s, are quite staggering (see
Annual Reports of Housing Management Department).
The harrassment and human misery which is hidden
behind such figures must have been phenomenal.
A system of housing management which included
liasing with Sheriff Officers and the legal system
on such a regular basis required a certain amount
of co-ordination and efficiency. Glasgow
corporation's City Factors department built up
such an efficient system over a number of years.
Some of the resident factors who were employed by
the corporation in the post-war years had already
gained a certain amount of experience of
collecting rent arrears through the courts in
their previous employment with private factors. As
the corporation did not have a pol icy on arrears
control in the 194-0s and early 1950s, this
experience, and their previous invol vement with
Sheriff Officers, must have been inval uabl e. In
any case, the factors department seems to have

- 98-
operated the system of control I i ng rent arrears
free :from any interference from the Housing
Committee.
The actual workings of this system were quite
complex and, inevitably, different processes were
gone through to recover rent arrears from tenants
in ordinary houses than those which were adopted
in intermediate and rehousing scheme houses. (51)
This elaborate procedure was developed over a
number of years, and involved not only a number of
key officials within the housing department, but
also collusion with the Sheriff Officer (Glasgow
corporation appointed its own Sheriff Officer to
deal with cases of rent arrears). This style of
housing management was not only well organised,
but was also draconian and refl ected the
differentiation and stigmatization of council
tenants which had arisen from a conscious pol icy
of selection and 'partial segregation' of the 'not
so deprived' and the 'very deprived' working class
of Glasgow.
Before concluding this section it is important
to outline, briefly, the relevant changes in the
hous i ng management department in the I ate 1960s,
in relation to the preceding discussion. The nurse
inpectresses continued to operate from within the

- 99-
Publ ic Heal th department until 1968, when their
services were transferred over to the Housing
Management Department. as it had been renamed in
1967. During the 1950s and early 1960s the nurse
inspectresses operated from within the various
housing schemes, when the corporation had 6
district offices. In 1968 their duties had been
passed over to Housing Supervisors, and a new
Central Transfer and Exchange office had been
establ ished at Head Off ice in India Street .. These
supervisors conducted their visits from Head
Office and reported their results to the District
Managers. By 1969, when there were 11 District
Offices, the supervisors were based in these
offices and were responsible to the District
Managers. The supervisors not onl y took over the
responsibility of regul ar house inspections but,
in addition, some of the responsibilities that
were previously the domain of the resident
factors:
"Housing supervision. within the sphere of'
Housing Management. Is the process o:f co-
ordinating the principles o:f property inspection
and care and maintenance with the welfare of'
tenants. the en:forcement and conditions o:f
tenancy. establishing a good relationship between

-100-
landlord and tenant, and ~rking with other
departments where a common interest exists. It is
essential that. the Housing Management Department
proves itself capable of managing the housing
under its control. creates and sustains the
interests o~ tenants in property and surroundings
and establishes trust within the communities. The
k.ey person in loca.l housing units is the
supervisor, who is located at District Office
level a.nd is responsible for up to 3.000
houses ...• "(52)
The idea of I establ ishing trust within the
communities' was a new concept, and could not have
been an easy task for officials whose latent
function was the policing and disciplining of
those same • communities'. However, for the first
time the housing management department began to
refer to the importance of buil ding up a
relationship with tenants organised on a
collective basis-: tenants' associations. This was
to be a central feature of housing management
strategies in the 1970s and, more particularly.
the 1980s.
What this section has sought to emphasise is
that, housing management in Glasgow in the post-
War years, despite the vast changes in housi ng

-101-
stock in the city. still operated along the lines
of' the system that had developed in the earl ier
part of the century. It was largely based on
notions of' social control and repression, which
had evolved since the middle of' the nineteenth
century and became more sophisticated as housing
management ideology developed. Resident Factors
and Nurse Inspectresses were relatively autonomous
"urban gatekeepers" who pI ayed a central rol e in
administering the latent f'unctions of the housing
department at a locality level. Housing management
came to be based on a division of funtions between
'key' of'f'icials employed in dif'f'erent departments
of' the corporation and. to a certai n extent, was
, decentralised' . As the years progressed,
important decisions on management policy began to
be made at Head Of'f'ice and the functions of'
of'f'icial s at district level came under the
increasing control and supervision of' their
'superiors' at the centre.
As we have seen, throughout this period
council tenants were still treated on an
individual basis. This individualism led t.o
certain sections ot' Glasgow's councU tenants
being identif'ied as a 'problem', a continuing
theme in housing management ideology. The

-102-
identification of 'problem tenants', based on
notions of • cleanl iness' and 'ability to pay
rent' • played a significant part of housing
management strategy. It is important, in this
context. to state that this should not be seen as
simply a refl ection of an ideology which
indi vidual housing official s hel d, though there
must have been a lot of that too. The
identification of the • social problem group', or
whatever term was in vogue at the time, has a long
history in British social pol icy. Charles Booth
(1886-1901 >. in his massive study of life in
Victorian London. was the originator of' the idea
of an 'unstable element within the submerged tenth
of the popul at ion' . In the inter-War years the
Mental Deficiency (Wood> Committee introduced the
term • social problem group' in 1929, to denote an
aggregate of famil ies which 'comprised a large
proportion of high-grade defectives'. During the
Second World War. when there was a massive
evacuation of children from large towns, the
Women's Group on Public Welfare adopted a new
standpoint, and the idea of a 'problem group' was
replaced with that of 'problem families'. (53) What
is being stressed here is that, the identification
of 'problem famil ies' through multiple
characteristics. e. g. the inabil ity to cope

-103-
financially. the neglect of' property and children,
poor heal th, untideness and so forth, is not
something that was unique to housing off'icials in
Glasgow corporation. However, as indicated above.
like other accounts of' such , probl ems' , the
characteristics applied to sections of' Glasgow's
council tenants were seen as resul ting f'rom the
'natural' or , pathol ogi cal' weaknesses of
i ndi vidual s or the families own , internal
deficiencies' Many of these families were born
into areas of overwhelming social deprivation,
where neighbourhood amenities were almost non-
existent and where the prospects of employment
were of'ten negl igihl e. The experiences of' peopl e
living in such conditions are not often recorded.
hut Jimmy Boyle has lef't us with a f'leeting
picture of' such an existence in the Gorbals around
1949, which is worth quoting in full:
If AI though the arch! tectural structure of' the
old buildings may have encouraged a sort of'
closeness, I think the dominant f'actor f'or this
unity was that everyone was In the same boat, and
didn't have two pennies to rub together. The
physical surroundings were bad, but that wasn't
the f'ault of' the inhabitants. Each householder did
their bit to keep the place as clean as possible.

-104--
taki ng turns to cl ean stairs and i -r someone was
sick then a neighbour would always do the sick.
person's turn. The houses were as clean as
circumstances would allow. I-r someone in the
street died, the neighbours would go round the
street houses collecting money in a bedsheet to
hel p the famB y meet the costs of the burial.
Though people couldn't afford much they would
usually try to contribute something. From the
extreme circumstance of a death to the simple need
of borrowing a cup of sugar, hel p was al ways at
hand". <54-)
It is perhaps asking too much to expect
outsiders, including corporation officials, to
comprehend this culture of survival built on
struggle <also, see J. Faley, 1990). The almost
constant experience of 1 iving in conditions of
poverty, which Boyl e allows onl y a gl impse of.
were part of much wider social deprivations
resulting from an unequal class structure.
'Problem Families' are among those who suffer the
worst forms of social depri vation in capital ist
society. However, as the above account has shown,
what distinguishes 'problem families' from • the
rest' is that they have been designated a
'problem family' by a social agency; in this case

-105-
Glasgow corporation. They were clearly being
1 abel 1 ed and treated as a probl em f'or the local
state.
"Comprehensive redevelopment" (the destruction
o£ large areas o£ the city) alongside the building
o£ vast new council housing schemes and high-rise
developments, were all part o£ a sustained policy
o£ physical renewal aimed at eradicating the
sl urns. Housing management pol icy. informed by a
selective system of housing allocation, was more
concerned with regulating and controlling the
'behaviour' of those sections o£ Glasgow's working
class who they presumed to be 'anti-social' and/or
'potentially disruptive'. as one former Labour
councillor commented:
"Considering the city's political tradition.
there is relatively little interest in the
seriously deprived f'amily. This sho~ itself' only
too clearly in the city's attitude to the problem
of' rent arrears cases, and probl em f'amilies who
are recycled in and out of' SIUD tenements and the
lowest amenity council schemes". (55)
This paternalistic style of housing management
existed throughout the post-War years into the
1970s. The "urban gatekeepers" in Glasgow's
housing management department were still using

-106-
methods of discipline and terror which their
nineteenth century predecessors in the CIT or
Octavia Hill would have recognised a mile off. At
the end of this period, hOW'ever. a number of
Changes began to take place. Until the late 1960s
and early 1970s the methods of housing management
in Glasgow mainly developed from within the
structures of the corporation, and the pol icies
and practices of officials were learned and
maintained partly in isolation, though drawing on
the ideology of the wider housing management
"profession". From the late 1960s a number of
government reports on housing management practice
began to appear, which W'ere critical of some of
the practices of some local authorities, and in
the earl y 1970s a number of changes to local
government organisation were made. Local
authorities took more cognisance of these
developments than of any official reports which
had been made in previous years. The
'professionalisation' of housing management also
began to be taken seriously during this period,
and in Glasgow training through the Institute of
Housing Managers increased. (56) For these, and
other reasons, housing management in Glasgow in

-107-
the 1970s and 1980s began to follow a new course
of development.
1. 5 Housing Management and Practice In Glasgow
1970-1990:
" ___ we regard the successful Integration of
new housing estates Into the surrounding
cODIIDunlty. and the rehabilitation or some older
estates where this has not been achieved. as one
of the most important tasks facing Scottish local
authorities today, perhaps even the most important
of all. Without success in this sphere all efforts
at slum clearance. education and the physical
development of local authority areas can go for
nought. Success can onl y be achieved by proper
management of housing estates and attention to the
needs of their tenants as communities, whether the
estates are large or small. We are convinced that
any authorities which do not pay proper attention
to these matters will be unable to meet the
challenge of the future effectively". (57)
New developments in housing management
practice were being advocated by the state by the
late 1960s. The idea. as expressed above. was to
treat housing schemes as 'communities'. This new
philosophy was intended to encourage housing
management departments to stop dealing with

-108-
council tenants only on an individual basis and,
it was cl aimed, this would be 'a great help in
keeping in touch with the needs and wishes of' the
peopl e' . It coincided with the ' redi scovery' of'
poverty and militant tenant activity in a number
of cities (see C. Cockburn, 1977) . Theref'ore,
these developments were part of' a general trend
wi thi n local government, and were not restri cted
to the arena of' housing management. They arose at
the same time as notions of' 'industrial democracy'
became f'ashionabl e. The phrase , participatory
democracy' had become a slogan of' the 'New Lef't'
student movements of the late-1960s. The
Skef'f'ington Report on Planning (1969), had also
ref' erred to the importance of' 'securing the
participation of the public' in the decision
making process. The popularity associated with
participation, f'or some of' those promulgating the
idea at least, was that it of'fered a mechanism f'or
transferring power from government and planners to
the people/community. In short, participation was
seen as a chall enge to representati ve f'orms of'
democracy. However, participation in planning. f'or
instance, was advocated as a technical problem to
elicit , consumer preferences' and not as a

-109-
political issue, related to the po~rlessness of
the 'clients'. <58}
In 1973 the Paterson Report on Organisation
and Management Structures in Scotland was
publ ished. This report not only led to a
restructuring of local government in Scotland, but
also to a review of local government management. A
central concern of the Paterson Report <and its
English counterpart, the Bains Report 1972} was
the need to improve integration and co-ordination
across the range of a local authority's activities
and all their recommendations looked towards this
central objective. In part, this was to be
achieved by greater emphasis on horizontal
departments and committees. It was also to be
sought by widening the focus of both committees
and departments, by grouping related activities
together and creating larger committees and
'programme areas' and 'directorates' respectively.
Ho~ver, the main way in which it was intended
that integration could be achieved was through the
establishment of a 'central co-ordinating team' on
both official and elected representative levels.
This was the 'corporate management' strategy. As
we will see, Glasgow District Council began to be

-110-
influenced by some of' these discussions in the
late 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1969 the Housing Commi ttee, and
subsequently the corporation, decided that the
build up of rental groups and the categorisation
of' houses into 'rehousing, , intermediate' and
'ordinary' was now considered to be unacceptable.
This was also the period when attention was
beginning to be f'ocused on the 'problems' in the
peripheral schemes (see G. Armstrong and M.
Wilson, 1973) . The corporation also made a
reappraisal of the rent structure based on
'amenity and letting potential'. In an attempt to
control rent arrears weekI y tenancies were al so
introduced for around 5,000 tenants. From this
process there emerged a rent structure of eight
, ameni ty groups'. What this actually meant in
practice was that, the corporation ranked the
diff'erent council housing schemes throughout the
city in order of' 'physical attraction, public
desirability and rental'. As we have seen, in
earlier sections, there were already in existence
a number of houses which were specifically
constructed f'or 'lower status tenants': i.e. under
the Housing Acts (Scotland) of 1930 and 1935. In
effect, the residualisation of council housing was

-111-
written into these and the corporation's
ranki ng system merel y emphas ised the i nferiori ty
of these schemes in architectural, env i ronmental
and social potential.
By 1974 there were 13 District Offices in the
13 areas of the city, which the corporation
recognised for administrative purposes, and by the
end of the decade this number had risen to 15.
Potential tenants gained access to corporation
housing either through a waiting list application,
or through re-housing due to slum clearance or
redevelopment. This was the official policy
anyway, the reality was somewhat different. A
simil ar sel ection process, as described earl ier,
was still in existence during this period with a
newl y named "urban gatekeeper" • the , housing
visitor', now at the centre of the decision making
process with regard to appl ications. (59) On
another level, the corporation began to refer for
the first time, in official documents, to the need
to establish links with Tenants' Associations and
~ard Committee's. Again the strategy was aimed at
specific target areas which were considered to
have 'serious problems'
" . . . there are serious problems in housing
areas and whi ch in many instances wi l I o n ! y be

-112-
solved when communities acquire an identity. have
:facill ties of" a social, cultural and commercial
nature In their midst, and where the environmental
provisions and upkeep of property, while being the
responsibility of" the local authority. become the
concern and recieve the protection of" those living
in the area". (60)
Arter years or being considered as incapable
organising their own home lives in a
'satisractory manner' Glasgow's council tenants
were apparently being of"fered some responsibility
for impl ementation of a If communi ty package". At.

o;0-L
this stage, the early 1970s, there ~ really no
clear plans about how such a process would be put
into operation. The fact that the • environmental
programmes' which arose out of" such concerns
proved to be environmental nightmares .. or the
people who lived in the schemes indicates that the
corporation was more concerned with imagery than
tackl ing the real ities of housing conditions in
these schemes. Within the space of 10 years.
however, Glasgow District Council's housing
management department was to move some way from
past practices. 'Tenant Participation' became the
new buzz-word wi thi n the housi ng department, and

-113-
was incorporated into a number of dif'f'erent
projects.
The remainder of this chapter will attempt to
provide an outline of how these dif'f'erent policies
came to be adopted and how they operated in
practice. For clarity the discussion will be
seperated into an analysis of four main management
strategies: Conununity Development, Area
Management, Tenant Participation and Conununity
Renewal. There is a certain tendency f'or these
terms to be used interchangeably. Therefore, it
should become cl ear that • tenant participation'.
in one form or another, is a central element in
all of these cases, and there is a certain amount
of overlap and interlinking of policy between each
area.
1.6 Community Development:
In October 1969 a conference of British and
American social scientists and administrators
convened to discuss progranunes of social action,
and more particularly, an experimental Conununity
Development Project which the Home Office was
about to undertake. According to one account, the
conference had been conce~ved at a meeting between
Richard Nixon and Harold Wilson in the previous
year. (61) In these discussions it had been agreed

-114--
that 'the two countries shoul d look together at
some of the domestic and social problems faced by
their governments'. In the United States at this
time 'community action programmes'. (set up by
L. B. Johnson's 'War on Poverty'), were being
dismantled. The British government, i t is claimed,
were int.ent on , I earning' from the American
experience in its search for relieving 'social
distress', through local innovative experimental
intervention. As a resul t of these del iberations
the National Community Development Project (CDP)
was founded. CDP was an 'action-based research
invest igat ion' into small-area depr i vat ion,
sponsored and financed by the Home Office as part
of the Urban Programme, in conjunction with 12
selected local authorities and 8 universities;
(Ferguslie Park in Paisley being the only Scottish
area chosen>.
The CDPs began as 'a neighbourhood-based
experiment aimed at finding new ways of meeting
the needs of people living in areas of high social
deprivation' . It was assumed that problems of
'urban deprivation' (meaning. in real ity. poverty>
had their origins in the characteristics of local
populations (the individual pathology again> and
that these could best be resolved by 'better field

-115-
co-ordination of the personal social services,
combined with the mobil isation of sel f-hel p and
mutual aid in the community', an idea with its
roots in British colonial administration in
Africa. (see C. Kirkwood, 1990). By 1974, however,
this analysis was rejected. The problems of the 12
CDP areas were seen, by the local proJ ect teams,
not as arising from the result of personal
inadequacy or flaws in the 'safety net'. but
rather:
"They are not isolated pockets su1'1"ering an
unrortunate combination 01' circumstances. they are
a central part or the dynamics 01" the urban
system". (62)
The project teams regarded the 'problems' not
as manager i al or techni cal ones, but as integral
to the political and economic process. It is
hardly surprising. given this kind of critique.
that the CDPs were eventual I y to suffer the same
dismantling process as the American , War on
Poverty' programme, which was their precursor. It
is important to contextualise our discussion of
• community development' in this way, for by doing
so we can begin to see the possibility of
contradictions arising from a management strategy
emanating from a housing department which includes

-116-
a , communi ty' element which strictly 1 imits
'participation' to a local 1 evel, ignoring wider
social and economic factors- a point Freire noted
in another context:
..... In • cODDDunity development' proJects, the
JDOre a region or area is broken down into local
communities without the study of these communities
both as total ities in themnsel ves and as part of
another totality. (the area. region, and so forth)
which in its turn is still part of a larger
total ity (the nation, as part of the continental
totality), the more alienation is intensi~ied. And
the more alienated people are, the easier i t is to
divide them and keep them divided. These focalised
forms o~ action, by intensi~ying the focalised way
of I i~e of the oppressed (especially in rural
areas) hamper the oppressed from perceiving
reality critically and keep them isolated from the
problems of the oppressed people in other
areas". (63)
From the beginning of the 1970s a number of
official reports by Glasgow corporation began
referring to the' increasing difficulty in letting
houses in certain areas of the city'. The imagery
associated with the 'difficult to let estate' had
arrived in Glasgow with a veng~nce. Li ke the

-117-
notion of 'probl em famil ies' , , probl em tenants'
and so forth the image presented of these schemes
were all totally negative. (64) The areas concerned
were mainly, but not wholly. the peripheral
schemes and the 'problems' identified were not all
related to housing.
In the early 1970s two of these peripheral
schemes, Easterhouse and Drumchapel, were broken
down to 10 and 8 districts respectively, to 'give
the tenants a sense of identity within a smaller
commmunity'. Each district within the larger areas
were given a name- for example, Rogerfield,
BI airtummock, in Easterhouse, and Cleddans,
Kingsridge, in Drumchapel. It was in this context,
of the corporation designating certain areas
firstly. as 'difficul t areas' • and then as
• identifiable communities' , that the idea of
'community development' arose. Of course, the
hidden assumption, or ' I atent function', of this
policy was that they would become 'manageable
communi ties'
In any case, the • probl ems' in Easterhouse
received priority and in early August 1973 the
corporation organised a number of meetings with
tenants in the ten districts they had created in
Easterhouse. As a resul t of these meeti ngs the

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Housing Committee recommended the appointment o:f
three community development o:f:ficers. It was also
suggested at this time that coordination between
various departments o:f the corporation was
required. A Working Party o:f of:ficials from the
Education. Housing. Planning. Police. Social Work
and Heal th departments was set up by the Pol icy
Committee o:f the corporation to 'examine the
prohl ems in depth' .
One of the central concerns of thi s worki ng
party was the apparent I ack of knowl edge on the
actual meaning ascribed to , community
development' . A proposal to set up a separate
Community Development Department responsible to a
Community Development Committee was considered at
this stage. Some o:f the individual departments o:f
the corporation already had a 'community
involvement section' in existence at the time
(i. e. the Pol ice and Educat i on departments). but
the influence o:f the , corporate management
strategy' • as advocated in the Paterson Report
mentioned earlier. obviously influenced this
proposal. However. the City o:f Glasgow Police were
the only department in :favour o:f the proposal with
the Housing, Planning. Social Work and Education
departments all ohj ect i ng to the proposal. The

-119-
then Depute Director of Education went as far as
to suggest that such a department coul d become a
'paper tiger', or even worse, be run by 'political
acti vists' . <65} Another development at this stage
was the carrying out of pilot studies in Blackhill
and Govan to assess the feasibility of 'community
development' in these areas.
The final outcome of all these deliberations
came on the 21st of January 1974- when the
Establishments Committee of the corporation
decided to set up a Community Development Section
within the housing management department. Three
CDOs were appointed- two to work with 'residents
associations' in Easterhouse, and one in the
Broomloan Road <Moorepark} area of Govan.
BI ackhill , which had been chosen as one of the
pil ot proJ ects, was I eft without a CDO. Part of
the explanation for this is that there were
furious debates within the corporation about
whether to demol ish or renovate the scheme <see
T. Martin, 1982) . Responsibil i ty for community
development projects was centralised under the
control of the Assistant Director of the
Management Services Uni t. Despite this, and the
fact that lengthy deliberations had already taken
pI ace, the function of community development

-120-
wi thi n the hous i ng department was st i II uncI ear,
or as one of the first CDOs observed:
"There ~ no training provided for us and we
were thrown in at the deep end to fend for
oursel ves". (66)
While the CDOs certainly had no clear remit,
the corporation had al ready acknowl edged the fact
that there was apparently few active tenants'
associations or community facilities available,
particularly in the • peripheral schemes'. Also one
of the main reasons for setting up the community
development section was to • foster the development
of I ocal communi ties' In this context, the rol e
of the CDOs not only entailed supporting existing
tenants' associations, but setting up new ones and
providing facilities for a meeting place for such
organisations: 'Tenants Halls'. The fact that it
was the corporation who were 'fostering' many of
these tenants' associations is a significant
factor in itself, and was to become part of the
overall strategy in the council's relationship
with tenants organisations in later years.
The corporation obtained Urban Aid funding for
setting up the tenants' halls and other 'community
facilities'. They were, and still are, run by
management committee's consisting of local tenants

-121-
and util ised by many 'community groups'; mother
and toddl er. old fol k. unemployed groups, for
instance. One CDO went as far as to suggest that
the reason for setting up the tenants' halls was
that i t was part of a publ ic reI ations excercise:
'paying I ip service to tenant participation'. (67)
This may have been partly true, but in a poignant
statement the then Director of Housing Management
provided other motives for such policies:
'" ••• The removal of the I them and us· situation
which bas been nurtured for some ten years now,
can achieve the objective of tenants understanding
how decisions are made and why things can or
cannot be done. I~ they can"t be done, perhaps the
tenants themsel ves can find a solution. This is
what cooperation is all about.
Housing Management is the biggest charge on
District Council resources, for this reason the
District Council must be involved in providing and
running better facil ities for tenants and making
them beneficial to all concerned. Greater
involvement at tenant and individual level and the
promotion of 'sel f hel p' must save the District
Council money in the long term...... (68)
Of course. the • them and us' situation had
existed for sl ightl y longer than ten years, and

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the promotion of' 'sel f' hel p' is a theme that has
existed since Octavia Hill introduced it to
housing management ideology a century earlier.
However. the period when this statement was made
was one in which there was a 'crisis of authority'
in the sphere of housing management in Glasgow. It
could be said, as Gramsci did in another context.
that 'the crisis consists precisely in the f'act
that the old is dying and the new cannot be born'.
'In this interregnum'. Gramsci again. 'a great
variety of' morbid symptoms appear' . (69) The
'crisis' in Glasgow was related to t h e ' problems'
of the 'peripheral schemes' and the sense of'
al ienation fel t by many of the tenants who lived
there, and made apparent in the number of
appl icants on the transfer I ist. The crisis was
one f'or the local state and the 'morbid symptoms'
which appeared was a management strategy to gain
the • co-operation of' tenants' (for what reason is
not clear), but crucially to 'save money in the
long term'. Thus, the 'community package'was part
of a management strategy to organise the
disorganised section of Glasgow's working class
council tenants in order that a relationship could
be establ i shed between hous i ng prof ess i onal sand
the 'marginalised' sections of the working class.

-123-
As Byrne has argued, such a relationship is vital
to:
" •.• the continuing maintenance of the
administrative structures of the state which are
concerned with facilitating the reproduction of
the • social proletariat' within capitalist
relations of production". (70)
The work o~ the community development section
of the housing department expanded to include
other areas of the city. and by 1983 there were 12
eDOs based throughout GI asgow and a senior eDO
based in Lomond House as part of the newly created
'Directorate'. A number o~ important changes, in
terms of the administrative role of the eDOs, took
place during these years. In 1979 the eDOs became
part of the 'area teams' - the 'area team I eader'
being the District Housing Manager. The reasons
given ~or this change were that, there was a lack
of integration of eDOs with the rest of the
housing department:
"The role of coDDDtlnity development in the
Housing Manageaent Department has been peripheral
rather than central. In terms of organisation
structure the Community Development Section was an
appendage and in terms of function had I ittle to
do with the day to day activities of the Housing

-124--
Department. The Area Housing Manager had no line
management control of the Co...unity Development
Officer ~rklng In his area as the reporting link
was bet~en the CDO and the SenIor Community
Development Officer", (71)
The Senior CDO had been appointed, af>ter some
dispute about who should get the Job, in 1982. The
rol e of> the Seni or CDO was to act as a central
ref>erence poi nt f>or all the CDOs throughout the
city, and basically to coordinate the work of>
those involved in this aspect housing
management. However, as the above quotation
indicates, there was some conf>usion about what
this rol e actual I y was. In any case, the housing
management department was 'decentral ised' in the
early 1980s. Any 'control' that the senior CDO had
over indi vidual CD Os was passed over to District
Housing Managers. The latter of>ficials certainly
fought for, obtained and still have a controlling
influence on the work done by CDOs. In this
period, the earl y 1980s, there was much debate
about the rol e of CDOs wi thi n a 'Comprehens i ve
Hous i ng Department I The debate real I y revol ved
around the issue of how much CDOs should be
involved in 'housing issues' as opposed to their
'development' role. For those who were attempting

-125-
to raise the consciousness ox council tenants, and
there were some, the battle was lost at this
stage. 'Community development' was now clearly
identixiable as part of a wider management
strategy. in a time of crisis and xinancial
cutbacks, to attempt to gain the acquiescence of
council tenants for whatever pol icy the housing
management department desired (see footnote 72 and
City Housing, 1985).
In 1984 the District Council decided to change
the organisational structure ox the Housing
Department. As a result of this there was a change
from 7 District Oxfices to 16 'autonomous' Area
Offices. The appointment ox additional CDOs to
each office continued, and by 1990 each district
office had one CDO. The rol e ox the CDO, as
explained in of xi ciaI reports, is still not clear
and is reflected in the different management
'styl es' operating in the various district
offices. Whil e there is some evidence that they
continue to 'support' tenants associations their
development role is now much more specifically
management orientated. The 'political activists'
have ironically become 'paper tigers'.
1. 7 Area Jlanagement:
-126-
As the policy being discussed in this section
is not entirel y reI ated to housing management it
is intended to provide a shorter description of'
another strategy which includes an element of'
'tenant participation'. Essentially this section
takes us back to the 'corporate planning' approach
to local authority management as outl ined in the
Paterson Report mentioned earl ier. The 'corporate
approach' implies:
" ..• an agency taking overall control of' its
activities and the way they relate to the changing
needs and problems of' its area of' interest". (72)
In the early 1970s, as previously
acknowledged, the most signif'icant changes
af'f'ecting the way local authority services have
been planned and provided were inf'luenced by this
• corporate approach'. Brief'l y. this was supposed
to entai I greater coordinated pI anni ng and the
development of' , area management approaches' .
Criticisms of' the 'corporate approach' created
1 nterest wi thi n local government ci rcl eSt of' a
, bottom-up' approach rather than a • top-down'
process of' management. This approach was aimed at
• involving local needs and pref'erences in decision
making' . Alongside this was the development of'
policies to concentrate resources in 'positive

-127-
discrimination' to areas with the worst 'urban
problems' . In the mid-1970s Strathlyde Regional
Council had identified 141 'Areas of Priority
Treatment' where the problems of 'mul tipl e
depori vation' were most acute. 47 of these areas
were concentrated in the City of Glasgow. This led
to the idea that 'area approaches' were necessary
to tackle these 'problems'
.. Area Management is a means of' providing an
area perspective in the decision making process of
the District Council. An 'area perspective" means
giving local District Councillors and local people
more direct influence and control over activities
in their area and to develop a better
understanding of' local needs and
opportunities". (73)
This is how Glasgow District Council defines
its 'area management' strategy. which is quite
different from programmes for 'area-based positive
discrimination' . However, it is a pretty vague
statement which needs elaboration through a
description of how it first arose and what it
actually entails in practice. 'Area Management'
was adopted by Gl asgow District CouncIl in May
1980, much 1 a ter than other local author I tIe s.
There are at 1 east two main reasons which are

-128-
normally referred to by officials and councillors
to explain why the council chose such a strategy.
One reason seems to be that on the death of its
first Chief Executive in 1979 the council
appointed a new Town Clerk and Chief Executive.
This individual, it is claimed, was far more
, innovative' and 'responsive to staff at lower
levels'. (74-) He was also, apparently, more ready
to support initiatives to 'improve the management
process' than his predecessor- in other words,
'corporate management' schemes. Another, perhaps
more significant, event was the fact that the
Labour Party had lost overall control of the
council in 1977. and experienced a short period in
opposition in a , hung council' . While in
opposition the Labour Party, it is argued,
recognised the • real sense of al ienation,
frustration. disaffection and cynicism throughout
so many communities in Glasgow'. It was in this
context, of being rejected by many working class
people in the city, that political support for an
'area approach' developed.
Throughout the post-War period, as we have
seen, housing was the most predominant pol itical
issue in Glasgow. Apart from brief spells in the
earl y 1950s and mid-1960s, when the Progressi ves

-129-
'Were in control of the council, Labour has
dominated Glasgow politics. This did not mean that
Labour was immune from campaigns by tenants'
organisations in the city. Jacobs has described
the incompetent and insensitive way that tenants
in the Gairbraid housing clearance area of
Maryhill were treated, by both councillors and
housing officials in the early 1970s. (75) In a
more celebrated case, Bryant has outlined the
campaign by tenants in the Gorbal s area of the
city to force the corporation to acknowledge the
problems associated with dampness in the new
blocks of 1'1 ats known as the Hutchesontown • E'
estate. (76) The problem of dampness and
condensation was defined by the corporation as
arising from the • 1 iving habits' of tenants and
not related to the structure of the housing. It
was only after a long, often 'militant', campaign
by the tenants that the corporation finally
accepted responsibil ity for the dampness in this
architectural disaster, and after twelve years the
buildings were eventually demolished. The way in
which working class Glaswegians were treated by
the 'city fathers' was part of a wider problem,
associated with the baronial ism encouraged by the

-130-
local government committee system and accepted by
the politicians in office.
Throughout this whole period there was often
talk of corruption and numerous scandals
surrounding the allocation of council housing.
Labour councillors were often accused of seeking
favourable terms for their friends and
acquaintances. This issue reached its apogee in
the 1970s when there was a number of enquiries
into corruption in the housing management
department, with the fraud squad being brought in
to investigate the situation. (77)
The most notorious case concerning 'letting
irregularities' occurred in 1977. The then vice-
chairperson of housing and Labour councillor for
Hutchesontown, a Mrs Catherine Cantley, was forced
to resign her position because of a house transfer
involving her son. Councillor Cantley was accused
of 'serious misconduct' after her son and his
'mistress' were transferred from a three-apartment
house in the Gorbals to a bigger one in the 'high-
amenity area' of Mansewood. This event occured at
a time when there was already an internal
investigation set up to look at house letting
regul ations, which found around 60 instances of
'alleged irregular house letting'. (78) The present

-131-
(1990) leader of the council. Pat Lally. who was
chai rperson of the hous i ng cornmi t tee in 1977 was
impl icated in this scandal along with the then
Director of Housing Management. Mr Malcolm Smith.
Lally was not accused of any direct involvement in
irregul ari ties, but rather, that he failed to
inform his colleagues of the situation earlier
than he did. After threatening his 'comrade', the
then Labour group leader Richard Dynes, with legal
action amid accusations of a • smear campaign'
councillor Lally was cleared of any involvement in
this scandal. However, one senior official of the
housing management department was forced to resign
his position over this issue, and eventually the
Procurator Fiscal called in Strathclyde Regional
Pol ice Fraud Squad to investigate house letting
• irregularities' (GI asgow Heral d. 22-6-77). Two
years later the Director of Housing was to write
as if these events had never happened:
"With the strident pol itical and press
cOJDlDents of 1977. and I ater dates. now muted by
the passing of! time and in the light of! the
f'indings of! the two enquiries which have tak.en
place, the Department, which has been subjected to
unparalleled abuse and innuendo, hopef!ully may now
be allowed to perform its important and expanding

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role in public afrairs untrammelled by past events
a.nd in the best traditions of public service". (79)
However, Labour had al ready lost control of
the council in the District Council elections of
1977, for the first time in ten years. It was in
this context, of being rejected by many working
class people in the city and the rise in support
for the Scottish Nationalist Party, that political
support for an 'area approach' developed. Labour
were returned to office in 1980. and could put the
plans they had developed in opposition into
operation. These 'plans' were by no means clear:
"In retrospect, our objectives were not
properly defined. If pressed. we ~uld say that we
were groping to'Wards an area perspective in the
decision making process- attempting in some way to
break down the apathy and cynicism among
communities. evidenced by so many things ranging
from population decline right down to petty
vandalism. We were groping towards improving the
delivery of services to make them more responsive
to local demands ... ••. (80)
While lacking in clarity, it is apparent that
this was another response to the crisis of the
local state geared to dealing with the outcome, as
oppossed to the causes, of alienation and poverty

-133-
in council housing schemes throughout the city.
In any event, the structure that emerged from
these 'gropings' consisted of a)Central Service
Commi ttees, b}Programme Area Teams, and c}Area
Management Committees. (81) The Area Management
Committees comprise of elected District and
Regional counci 11 ors, MFs, local , community
representati ves' and official s from various
departments of the District Council. They are
serviced by a full-time off i cer, the Area
Coordi nators' , and reports go to the central
Policy and Resources Committee of the council. At
present the city is divided into ten 'areas', with
seven area management areas, two Joint Initiative
Areas <Easterhouse and Drumchapel ) , and one
Central Management Area. The latter of these
committee's deals mainly with the c i t y ' s ' image',
tourism, retail and commercial development: the
'Glasgow's Miles Better' committee! The other
committee's all have some form of , community
invol vement' The majority of this consists of
representatives from Community Councils, though
some committees have representatives from tenants'
associations, who attend the monthly meetings in
the City Chambers to 'put across the local view'

-134--
Each of the Area Management Committees (AMCs)
are allocated finance from the Area Budget and
spending is COll.tl'olled by t.he Area Coordinator.
The AMCs are supposed to allow councillors and
'community representatives' the opportunity to
discuss and resol ve any matter which may effect
their own area. The idea of , participatory
democracy' is evident here, but its significance
in terms of changing the decision making process
from a • communi ty' point of view is debateabl e.
All major decisions affecting local 'communities'
are not made at the AMCs, but at committee level
within the council. At the very least the AMCs are
creating a 'neighbourhood buffer' between the
'community' representatives and the real decision
makers in the council. Councillors could even be
in the ludicrous position of making speeches at
the AMCs which are supportive of the views of the
'community' representatives, but are then free to
vote in opposition at central committee level.
Whatever the intentions behind such a complex
system of management strategy, Area Management has
so far proved impotent in shifting power to 'local
communities' and, in effect, very cleverly left
local • communi ties' isolated from each other in
the struggle for better resources and services.

-135-
1.8 'Tenant Participation':
'f • • • the most significant factor about Tenants
Associations in Housing Schemes has been the
largely spontaneous nature of' their
developaent ••. Social Workers are becoming
increasingly interested in ways of' helping
associations of' tenants to function in areas where
spontaneous local leadership does not
appear .•• Participation is in the air. We should
not need to devalue i t or be frightened by it. We
can try to understand i t and help to shape i t in a
positive way ...... (82)
'Tenant participation' is another management
strategy which developed wi thin local authori ty
housing management department's in the late-1960s
and earl y-1970s, though again much later in
GI asgow. (83) It is one of' the most elusive
concepts to define, and every housing official.
councillor or tenants representative has a
different idea of' what it actually entails in
practice. Nevertheless, as the above quotation
indicates, there were a number of local government
prof'essionals and academics who were conscious of
the dangers inherent in 'spontaneous' developments
amongst tenants' organisations which were in need
of 'positive' direction.
-136-
'Tenant participation' can range f'rom
providing inf'ormation or consultation through to
the sharing of pO'Wer <see S. Arnstein, 1969>' It
may be adopted, according to official rhetoric. to
achieve changes in pol icy or practice and/or to
chall enge • traditional' views of housing
management. (84) We need to be aware then of the
context in which the term has arisen. and the fact
that while most people within Glasgow's housing
management department may speak f' avourabl y of' the
idea there is a certain vagueness about its
meaning. Additionally. it must be acknowledged
that a wide range of' initiatives which come under
the rubric of' , tenant partici pation' have
developed f'rom wi thi n the housing management
department and what follows is a brief outline of
the main activities.
In early 1982 a 'Task Force on Service
Delivery' was set up af'ter discussions between the
housing department, the Directorate and the
political administration of the Council. The main
concern of' this group was the '1 evel of service
provided by the Housing Department to tenants and
other members of the publ ic' . The group
considered the views of' the trade unions and
certain tenants representatives in formulating

-137-
their recommendations. They suggested that • the
service delivered to Glasgow's council tenants
must improve and be seen to improve' (85) Later in
the same year a Sub-Committee on Tenant Co-
operatives and Participation was £ormed. This
group looked at various aspects o£
'consultation/participation' then in existence, as
well as considering several reports on the
consul tation exercise which had taken pI ace in
relation to the "tenant's lease" and the newly
introduced computerised allocation system. The
working group was supplemented by the newly £ormed
Tenant Participation Advisory Service (T. P. A. S. ).
It was in this administrative context that a
pol icy framework for the development of 'tenant
participation' arose in Glasgow. After subsequent
meetings the Working Party agreed to the £ollowing
aims for 'tenant participation':
"to assist the development of an informed and
representative tenants movement through fostering.
assisting and supporting tenants organisations in
Glasgow;
to allow tenants to influence decisions by
creating opportunities for tenants to engage in a
dial ogue with the Council;

-138-
to allow tenants choice between options
arising from such a dialogue;
to create and foster opportunities for direct
management and control by tenants", (86)
The wide range of options opened up by 'tenant
participation', already referred to, was to become
part of the management strategy, and it should be
emphasised that it was a management strategy! A
number of other sub-groups were set up throughout
1983, to look into specialised activities within
the housing department and how these would relate
to 'tenant participation'. In April 1984 the above
recommendations were incorporated into a Programme
For Action for Tenant Participation in the Housing
Service, a document produced by the then Director
of Housin~ To develop and coordinate this
programme a Tenant Participation Officer (TPO) was
appointed and was directly resonsible to the
Directorate Management Team, the central decision
and pI ann i ng group wi thi n the hous i ng department.
Initially it was intended that the TPO would work
closely with the eDOs to 'develop a comprehensive
Community Development function within the
Department' , However, the idea of centralising
control of the eDOs met with some opposition:

-139-
"At one time, I think. he [the TPO] would have
liked to build himsel f a I ittle empire, but he
realised he would not get an easy run at it. He
came along to a number of the month! y meet i ngs of
the CDOs and realised that we would not simply
I fsten to his demands. Quite honestly. there was
no malice intended, Just that we were not willing
to submit to his control". (87)
AI ready caught in the paradoxical position
between .. de ve lop i ng" tenants' associations and
being responsible to District Housing Managers
most of the CDOs reJ ected further attempts at
manipulation from within the housing department.
However, the TPO continued to cooperate with some
individual CDOs on a regular basis. The TPO,
operating from within the Directorate, worked
mainl y with the Gl asgow Council of' Tenants'
Associations (GCTA), through the Tenant
Participation Management Committee. (see chapter
5). One of the main purposes of' this set up was:
"as~ting the development of an informed and
representative tenant~ movement through fostering.
assisting and supporting tenants' organisations in
GI asgow"'. (88)
The 'informed and representative' tenants'
movement basicall y became the GCTA. This

-140-
organisation now has its own o~~ice. sta~~ and is
independentl y funded out of the 'Tenants Action
Fund' which came into existence in 1989 and
consists of a 5p weekly payment from each tenant,
based on an opt-out scheme, and is expected to
amount to over £100.000 per annum. GCTA were also
involved in discussions with the council which led
to the new tenants lease in the early 1980s and to
the formation of a tenants tribunal in 1988/89.
They are continously involved in discussions with
the Housing Department and councillors on a wide
range of issues which concern tenants in the city.
and have basically taken on a developmental role.
'Tenant participation' exists in other forms
throughout the city. One of the most publ icised
schemes o~ 'tenant participation/control' is the
council's Community Ownership programme- housing
co-operati ves. Gl asgow District Council has been
promoting housing co-operatives since 1980. Yet.
despite the fact that i t has been promoted in some
cases as the only option that tenants can choose,
it has not been taken up by a I ar ge number of
tenants as a management option and remains a
fairly small part of tenure development in the
city. (89) There are also a number of local letting
initiatives where tenants l representatives have a

-141-
direct input into the allocation of' houses at a
locality level, but little power as other social
agencies like Strathclyde Police and the Social
Work Department have much more inf'luence over the
housing department. (90) This aspect of' 'tenant
participation' reveals that the housing department
may I isten to what the tenants want, but do not
necessarily have to do what they want. The
inequalities inherent in this power relationship
mean that the housing department can withdraw f'rom
any commitments which may have been discussed
under the guise of' 'tenant participation'. Behind
all the f'acade about 'tenant participation' it
seems that the management stategy is to draw the
tenants' organisations into the decision-making
process on their terms. It is also evident that
the f'etters of' the old ideology of' stigmatisation
still persist alongSide these developments, as one
recent of'f'icial document indicates:
II In the past we have been accused of' not
recognising the good tenancy records of' people. In
the :future, to encourage people to live up to
their resonsibllitIes, we should encourage them to
-reel that we appreciate the eff'orts of' good
tenants. Accordingly, where approprIate, we should
re'Ward those people who have obvIously been

-142-
looking after their close. garden. house. etc and
keeping their rent up to date regularly. This can
be by using the Estate Management Budget to erect
a fence. improving the garden <putting in
rosebushes. etc), buying paint for tenants to use
to improve the close. etc. or simply Just ~iting
and saying • well done thanks Cor your
eCCorts' ". (91)
The ideology behind this management strategy
should be familiar by now; the 'problem' lies with
those individuals/families who do not attain the
standards required of them by the housing
department, particularly the prompt payment of
rent. Octavia Hill can rest peacefully knowing
that her legacy is still in place.
'Tenant participation' arose in Glasgow later
than it did in other areas. The reasons for this
are not entirely clear, but it is difficult to
escape the fact that a number of external factors
had a part to play in the introduction of 'tenant
participation' schemes. From at least the time of
the 1974--75 economic recession, wi th sharp rises
in unemployment, the state responded with a whole
range of inner city policies, as the social and
economic probl ems appeared to be more entrenched
in these areas. However, alongside the new urban

-14-3-
programmes the Call aghan government of the I ate
1970s introduced a series of public spending cuts
in capital spending programmmes. The programme of
public spending cutbacks was taken up with a
vengance after the election of the Thatcher
government in 1979. (92) Inevi tabl y. local
authority spending was affected by these cutbacks
and, particularly public spending on housing, with
the proportion of council housing being buil t in
the 1980s at its lowest levels since the early
1920s. Under the provisions of the Tenants' Rights
Etc (Scotland) Bill 1980 council tenants were
given the 'right to buy' the house in which they
lived, but unlike the corresponding Act for
England and Wales there was no provisions to
encourage the consultation of tenants. The
extension of the operation of market forces and
the reduction of the role of local authorities in
housing throughout the 1980s were met with a
response from a number of local authorities to
deal with 'new' societal structures and patterns,
notably policies of 'decentralisation'. (93)
Glasgow District Council responded to these
economic, social and ideological changes in
similar ways as other local authorities had done,
with policies of new municipal interventionism, in
response to a 'legitimation crisis'. Therefore,

-144-
'tenant participation' explicitly derived ~rom
attempts to improve the quality of' the
reI ationship between the housing department and
Glasgow's council tenants, while the implicit
reasons were di rectI y reI ated to changes in the
state's support f'or the idea of' council housing
per se.
1.9 Community Renewal:
"Communi ty Renewal is the biggest tenant
participation scheme in existence in Britain
today". (94)
This is how one o~ficial within Glasgow's
housing department de~ined the purpose o~ the
, community renewal' project. The reality is
somewhat dif'ferent, and in any case comparati ve
data would need to be attained be~ore we could
Justif'y such statements. Basicall y. , community
renewal' is the term which is used by the housing
department to describe a number of' I arge-scal e
modernisation programmes which are being carried
out to housing across the city. The investment f'or
these projects comes f'rom a 'Covenant Scheme'
signed with ~our major private banks, amounting to
an extra £140 million being borrowed to supplement
the Housing Capital Programme, which has been
summed up thus:
-145-
"One of' the key objectives of' the Covenant
Scheme is to adopt a new approach to the way the
Council handle improvement projects by seeking to
involve the residents themselves in all aspects of'
a comprehensive renewal and restructuring of' their
estate. ProJects like this are called Community
Renewal and the way they are handled is of' primary
importance to the Council's overall long term
objectives f'or reversing the decline of' our worst
housing areas". (95 >
The worst housing areas were mainly
concentrated in the peripheral schemes and other
council housing schemes, which are now known in
official jargon as 'problematical areas', and this
is where most of the Community Renewal projects
have been impl emented. There has, however, been
minimal , participation' by tenants in most of
these schemes. 'Involving' the residents consists
of the housing department organising 1 ia:son
groups/steering committee·s of tenants in an area
scheduled for 'community renewal'. Whether or not
a tenants' associat.ion has existed in the area
previous to the modernisation project beginning,
the housing department sets up a new group which
it can liase with. The extent of involvement does
not, as suggested by the official policy, include

-146-
a contribution rrom tenants on the plans for
'comprehensive renewal and restructuring or their
estate'. Tenant involvement is limited to choosing
the colour or bathroom suites, kitchen units, and
so rorth, wi th some rurther say in the proposed
changes to the architectural structure or the
building in which the Community Renewal project is
being carried out. No group has so rar been
involved in the decisions about the 'restructuring
or their estate' . The idea or , tenant
participation' in this context is quite clear:
""Tenant participation is not about sharing
power. it is about gaining the active consent
rather than the passi ve acceptance :from tenants
:for the housing departments plans". (96)
'Tenant participation', in this context, is
not about changing the nature or the power
relationship between tenants and housing
management but merel y gaining the consent ror the
council's objective or restructuring the
peri pheral • and other, council housing schemes.
The vast majority or Glasgow's council tenants
have had 1 i ttl e say in rormul ating these
objectives. despit.e years or , tenant
participation' policies.
-147-
The contradictions contained within the
Council's strategy for council housing in Glasgow
alongside the ideology of 'tenant participation'
are staightforward. We have already noted that
recent changes in housing policy- the cutbacks on
subsidies for and the production of , social'
housing alongside policies to promote owner
occupation, in particul ar through the 'right to
buy', have increased the marginalised position of
council housing alongside the rise in alternative
forms of tenure.. Alongside the changes in the
housing market during the 1980s there were al so
changes within the labour market, with the re-
emergence of a large section of the working class
on relatively low incomes, rising unemployment and
cutbacks instate benef i ts. (97) The consequences
of all of these changes, in the context of housing
policies, are only now becoming clear. The housing
agenda set by the Thatcher government has taken
place almost by stealth, and in Glasgow the Labour
Council have responded in a similar fashion. The
situation faced by working class Glaswegians is
similar to what it has been for the best part of
thi s century, and was recognised in a recent
inquiry into housing in the city:

-148-
"There is a :major housing crisis in Glasgow
which is causing serious hardshi p to aany
thousands of people in the city. Some of the
individual cases we have witnessed have been
highly distressing and would have resulted in
prosecutions private landlords been
responsible ...... (98)
The authors of this report provided a
comprehensive analysis of the housing problems in
GI asgow and made a series of recommendations on
future policy development and the formation of new
programmes for public sector housing. Many of
these recommendations have been adopted by the
Council and are in the process of' being
impl emented; Community Renewal' • for instance,
being one attempt to overcome the reduction of
state support for housing investment. The strategy
behind these new policy developments has been made
clear in two recent official reports. and it is
within these that the contradictions become
apparent. (99) Recognisng the changing nature of
housing provision in the city, in the context of
wider policy changes. the council produced a
strategic housing plan in 1989. Among the key
components were:
-149-
II i )Comprehensi ve area based renewal of publ I c
housing estates to provide high quality mixed
tenure housing and a good residential environment;
i i ) Removal from the social rented sector of
surplus stock in ~ys which positively contribute
to achieving Glasgow's housing objectives. This
may include demolitions to reduce residential
densities and the creation of IDOre popular house
types as ~ll as Joint ventures with the private
sector to dlversi~y tenure and bring private
sector resources into area renewal schemes;
iii)Further transfers to other social housing
agenCies including housing co-operatives to extend
opportunities for tenant control of housing and to
maximise the resource flow into area renewal;
v)Continued improvements in housing management in
order to promote tenant invol vement and' control,
better customer service. greater sensitivity to
customer requirements and better neighbourhood
quality;
vi i)A continuing role :for private developers in
inner city renewal and in support of area renewal
projects in public service housing schemes", (100)
Behi nd the I anguage of management and the
market, where council tenants become • customers' •

-150-
the council proposes to remove at I east 20,000
houses from its control through demolition, height
reduction and stock transfers, in addition those
houses that will be sold off through the 'Right to
Buy' and to private developers. There may well be
sensible pragmatic reasons for a large local
authority such as Glasgow adopting these policy
options, particularly trnasfers to housing co-
operatives (see D. Clapham. 1989, for example).
However, these policies have fundamental and long-
term implications for the provision of public
sector housing in the city and, as in the past,
council tenants and their organisations have had
very litte say in the drafting of a strategy with
wide-ranging ramifications for their future.
'Tenant participation' is limited to the level of
consultation with housing management on small-
scale changes in management , styl e' with no
consideration of tenant involvement in the large-
scale restructuring of their areas. It is in this
context that we must question the validity of
concepts like 'tenant participation'. Behind such
notions there is always a mythological element. or
as C. wright Mills suggested in another context:
"We cannot assume today that men :must in the
last resort be governed by their own consent.

-151-
Among the means of power that now prevail is the
power to manage and to mani pul ate the consent of
men. That we do know the I imi ts of such power- and
that we hope i t does have limits- does not reaove
the 'fact that much power today is successfully
employed without the sanction of the reason or the
conscience o'f the obedient". (101)
It is for these reasons that this chapter has
stressed that the dreadful sameness between the
paternalistic era and the • communi ty' era of
housing management in Glasgow merits more
observation than all the differences that are, in
other respects, obvious. The hegemony of housing
management ideOlogy, as the following chapters
will reveal, has not al ways recei ved the acti ve
consent of Gl asgow' s council tenants, whose own
prior~ties were defined by other circumstances in
many instances.
**********************
-152-
CHAPTER ONE
NOTES
1. This factor has been recognised by a number of
writers. See, for example, M. Brion and A. Tinker
(1980); D. Clapham, (1987); P. Gallagher, (1982)
and A. Richardson, (1977).
2. O. Hill (1875), p7.
3. A. Summers (1979), traces the rise of voluntry
visiting of the poor by "leisured" women from the
late eighteenth century, giving some indication of
the widespread belief in the "moral superiority"
of the middle class.
4. If anyone is still unwilling to accept the fact
that the ideology associated with the work of
Octavia Hill continues to infl uence the housing
management profession a reading of the Institute
of Housing Manual of 1985 should serve to dispel
the illusion. There are two classic articles
responding to views which were critical of the
thinking of Octavia Hill and the contemporary
relevance.
5. P. Malpass, (1984>, p36.
6. See A. Richardson, (1977) pp71-73 for a full
discussion of these issues.

-153-
7. D. Clapham, (1987) p109.
8. Figures f'rom the Corporation of' Glasgow.
<1974->, pp9-10. Held in Glasgow Room of' Mitchell
Library. For an outline of' the Economic History of'
the region see S. G Checkl and, (1976); R. Savill e
[Ed], (1985) and A. Sl aven, (1975). For a social
and cuI tural history of' GI asgow, see S. Damer,
<1990 >.
9. This f'actor is borne out by T. Johnston, <circa
1929>. In this much negl ected, but neverthel ess
semi nal work, Johnston reveals that while the
population of' Glasgow rose by 33,031 between 1831
and 184-1, the number of' houses onl y increased by
3,551. p291.
10. See A. K. Chalmers, (1905), f'or a contemporary
outline of' these issues.
11. See J. Engl ish, R. Madigan and P. Norman.
(1976), f'or a f'ull account of' these developments.
12. James Burn Russell. inA. K. Chal mers [Ed].
(1905), p216.
13. This is indicated in the Corporation of'
Glasgow (1904-), p2.
14-. City Improvement Act 1866, Administration
Notes No 28. Held in S. R. A. AGN 4-.

-154--
15. See S. Damer, (1976), p73.
16. Corporation of Glasgow. <1914-), p58.
17. See the Corporation of Glasgow Housing Report
1911.
18. For an outl ine of the events surrounding the
1915 Rent Strike in Glasgow see S. Damer, (1980)
and J. Melling, (1983),
19. The power bestowed on the City Engineer led to
a number of disputes with the City Architects
Department in the 1930s and 194-0s over the layout
of housing schemes. These disputes have been
detailed by J. Broady and J. Mack, (1960).
20. See J. Broady and J. Mack. ( 1960 ) . AI so R. M.
Ri ngl and, (1979).
21. E. Moberl y Bell, <194-2). pp87-88.
22. Corporation of Glasgow (1904), p14.
23. Glasgow Corporation, (1927) Annual Report of
the Medical Officer of Health, p195.
24. GI asgow Corporation (1935) Annual Report of
25. City Improvements Department (1944-) Report of
Special Sub-Committe on Letting, April. Document
he I d i n S. R. A.
-155-
26. This information was described to me by a
former resident factor who informed me that they
used Booths Gazette- a document used by hire
purchase companies to 'blacklist' people who were
a 'bad risk'. The housing department passed on any
information that would be of relevance to these
companies, and recieved such information
themselves in return for 'favours done'
27. Anuerin Bevan quoted in M. Foot, (1975), p62.
28. According to the 1951 Census, Glasgow still
contained 1.09 million people, of whom three-
quarters of a million were living in 1,800 acres
of land at an average density of 4-00 persons per
acre. Some areas of the city still contained 700
persons per acre. 50.8 per cent of the city's
houses were of one or two rooms. 24-.6 per cent of
the ,population lived at more than two persons per
room- (89,000 peopl e were Ii vi ng at more than 3
persons per room)- and 4-4-.2 per cent of houses
were overcrowded. 29.2 per cent lacked an inside
toil et, while 4-3 per cent had no bath. The
equivalent of the last two figures for London were
5. 5 per cent and 1. 7 per cent respect i vel y. See
Census of Scotland, City of Glas~ow, Vol 3, 1951.
29. Corporat i on of GI asgow. (1947). There are al so
details of these operations contained in the

-156-
Annual Reports of the Medical Officer of Health
for these years, which differ slightly from those
in this report but do not change the overall
impression.
30. Gl asgow Corporation, (1943) Annual Report of
31. For a description of housing conditions during
this period see T. Brennan, (1959) ; A. Gibb,
(1983) and M. Pacione, (1981).
32. Sir P. Abercrombie and R.H. Mathews. (1949).
33. See A. Gibb, (1983), p164. In 1951-52 when the
Progressive- Re: Conservative- administration
proposed to sell off council houses being built at
the Merrylee Road scheme there were 104,000 people
on the waiting list.
34. Glasgow District Council. Housing Management
Department Annual Report 1979. The Scottish Film
Archi ve, based in Glasgow, have a number of
fascinating films from the late 1940s on the
building of the 'peripheral schemes'. I would like
to record my thanks to Janet McBain for her
assistance in providing me with these films.
35. See F. Worsdall, (1979).
36. The figures for 1982 are derived from A. Gibb.
(1983). and those for 1986 are contained in the

-157-
City of Gl asgow District Council Annual Housing
Review 1986-87. The extent to which the pI anners
were influenced by the modernist movement in
architecture was made apparent in a promotional
film made in 1949- 'Glasgow: Today and Tommorrow',
avaliable from the Scottish Film Council. The
plans for high-rise building in the city were
nothing short of phenomenal.
37. Richard Dynes, then Labour Leader of Gl asgow
District Council, in the Glasgow Herald. 19th
November 1974.
38. For details of the contribution of the SSHA to
Scottish housing see T. Begg, (1987).
39. See Corporation of Glasgow (1944) Special Sub-
Committe on Letting. April. Document held in
S. R. A.
40. Ibid.
41. Corporation of Glasgow, Report by the Medical
Officer of Health on the Work of the Nurse
Inspectresses of the Health Department. 13th April
Document held in Strathcl yde Regional
Archives.
42. Corporation of Glasgow. (1951) Annual Report
of the Medical Officer of Heal th, ppI53-54. The
extent to which the GI asgow bourgeoisie viewed

-158-
this as a problem is clearly expressed in A.K.
Chalmers and Sir John Mann, (1933).
43. R. Titmuss. Foreword to A. Philp and N. Timms,
(1962) .
44. T. Brennan. (1959). p153.
45. Corporation of GI asgow. City Factors
Department (1959) Report Prepared by the City
Factor for the Property Management Committee on
the Organisation of the Department. 12th October.
Document hel din SRA.
46. Corporation of Glasgow. City Factors
Department (1960) Private Departmental Memorandum:
Staff Duties of Resident Factors. 6th April.
Document held in SRA. S. Damer (1989) pp82-85, has
provided similar figures for the inter-war years.
47. Transcript of interview held with former
resident factors held on 24--5-89. One of these
former resident factors introduced me to the finer
points of research by refusing, in a very blatant.
bigoted and provocative way, to be intervie\Ved.
The probl em became apparent at the begi nni ng of
the interview when he asked me to spell my name.
Unknown to myself, at this stage, the spelling of
my surname gives a clear indication of religious
background. It turned out that I apparently

-159-
, kicked with the wrong foot' , hence the
unwillingness to cooperate. After some ridicule by
his secretary, who was present in the room at this
point and by treating his comments with the
contempt that they deserved. his resistance
diminished as he could not resist the opportunity
to tell his own story- which was al so described
with some bitterness.
Department. Reply to Question by Council I or
Roberts by the Convenor of the Property Management
Committee. 27th June 1957. Document held in S.R.A.
Department (1959) Report prepared by the Ci ty
Factor for the Property Management Committee on
the Organisation of the Department. 12th October.
Document held in S.R.A.
50. Corporation of Glasgow (1971).
51. An outline of the basis on which this system
operated is contained in a report by the
Corporation of Glasgow City Factors Department
entitled 'Court Work' 12th November 1964. This
document was kindly provided by Sean Damer. and I
must record my thanks to him for this and other
assistance he has given me.

-160-
52. Corporation of Glasgow (1969). p7.
53. See C. P. BI acker, (1968) pp216-217.
54. J. Boyle, ( 1977) p8. Similar accounts as
those contained in Boyle's book have been
described to me in personal interviews conducted
wi th a number of counc i I tenants who 1 i ved in
various areas of the city during the 1930s and
194-0s. It is worth noting that these conditions
and the images that surrounded them were not
conf i ned to GI asgow. or indeed Britain. Saul
Alinsky, when he arrived in the 'Back of the
Yards' neighbourhood in Chicago in the 1930s,
noted that it was 'a byword for disease,
delinqency, deterioration, dirt and dependency'.
See Saul D. Alinsky, <1941>, p798.
55. V. Cabl e. , Glasgow: Area in Need'. in G.
Brown. [Ed] ( 1975 ) .
56. For an account of the numbers of housing
officials pursuing professional training during
this period see the Corporartion of Glasgow
Hous inS' ManaS'ement Department Annual Reports from
1968 to 1974.
57. Scottish Development Department (1967). p4l.
58. For a fuller discussion of these issues see J.
Simmie (1981).
-161-
59. See S. Damer and R. Madigan (1974). AI so S.
Jacobs, (1976) provides vivid details of people's
experience of this kind of housing management
practice in a Housing Action Area in Glasgow in
the earl y 1970s.
60. Corporation of Glasgow <1972 ) Housing
Management Department Annual Report. p6.
61. P. Marris (1982), p14.
62. CDP The National Community Development
Project. London: CES Publications. March 1974.
63. P. Freire (1972).
64. The notion of 'dificul t to let estate' was
first mooted by Roger Wilson. <1963>' There is
abundant evidence of the negative image of Glasgow
housing schemes in BBC documentaries, media
representation in numerous Journals and in many
novels based on the city. The moral panic about
the ' probl ems I in these schemes- particularly
Juvenile delinquency- had reached its height in
1968 when Frankie Vaughan made a flying visit to
Easterhouse and declared an amnesty for gang
weapons. See G.Weightman (1977) and S. Damer,
(1989) for an account of some of these events and
the images portrayed.

-162-
65. Letter to Town Clerk from the Depute Director
of Education. 8th March 1974. This I etter, and
other vital documents, was kindly provided by Cath
Arthur, former Senior CDO with Glasgow District
Council, to whom I am profoundly grateful for all
her ass i stance.
66. Interview with Cath Arthur held on 9-6-89.
67. Interview with CDO held on 10-8-89.
68. M.A. Smith. Director of Housing Management
Glasgow Distrtct Council, <1977 } , Community
Provision in District Council Housing Schemes: A
Document for Discussion'. 17th October.
69. A. Gramsci, (1971), p276.
70. See D. Byrne, ( 1986a) for an extended
discussion of these issues.
71. City of' Glasgow. Housing Management Department
(1983) 'The Role of Community Development in a
Comprehensive Housing Service' 4th March, p3.
72. R. Hambleton (1978), p45.
73. City of Glasgow District Council (1986) 'Area
Management, Information Briefing'. 7th August.
74. Interview with D. Horner, Area Coordinator
GDC, held on 16-3-89.
75. S. Jacobs (1976).

-163-
76. R, Bryant (1979).
77. Glasgow Herald 14th June 1977.
78. Glasgow Herald 14th June 1977.
79.Corporation of Glasgow (1979). p4.
80. J. McFadden (1983), pI03.
81. See D. Horner (1987) for a full description of
this structure.
82. C. M. Carmichael (1969) p12.
83. A. Richardson (1977) has described how notions
of 'Tenant Participation' were in existence as
early as the 1920s and 1930s but did not come to
fruition until the early 1970s. Another useful
introduction- to this debate is provided by D. Fox
<1974>'
84. See R. Goodlad, (1988) for a discussion of
these issues.
85. Glasgow District Council. Housing Management
Department (1982) Task Force on Serv ice Del i very.
Final Report. 15th April. Document held by the
Glasgow Council of Tenants' Associations.
86.Glasgow District Council <1983 ) Report to
Working Party on Consultation by Director of
Housing and Tenant Participatory Advisory Service.
15th February. Document held by GCTA.

-164--
87. Interview held with CDO. 10-9-89.
88. Glasgow District Council/TPAS Working Group on
Consul tation (No Date. circa 1982 >. • Towards a
Policy Framework For Tenant Participation in
Glasgow'
89. See Glasgow District Council Housing
Management Department Annual Housing Review 1986-
87 for details.
90. Interview with CDO 2-12-89, who indicated that
tenants representat i ves were deliberatel y I ed to
believe that they had the final say on individual
letting in areas where local lettings inititives
Y.7ere in operation. In contrast to this, housing
management dec i s ions were based more on reports
from pol ice and social workers working in the
area, showing the distinct overlap in the work of
social control agencies and the I imitations to
this form of 'tenant participation'.
91. City Housing Glasgow. (Undated, circa 1989-90)
Estate Management Guidlines.
92. See A. Friend and A. Metcalf, (1981).
93. There are a number of accounts of
decentralisation initiatives. The best of these
i ncl ude- J. Seabrook, (1984-); P. Hambl eton. and R.

-165-
Hoggett. (1987); K. Beuret and G. Stoker, (1986)
and R. Mainwaring, (1988).
94. Interview with Central Area Coordinator for
Community Renewal Projects, held on 5-12-89.
95. City Housing Glasgow (1988) p2.
96. Interview with Central Area Coordinator for
Community Renewal, held on 5-12-89. (not taped).
97. In February 1989, around 21.5 per cent of the
population of Strathclyde Region were living at or
below the Income Support 1 evel . In Gl asgow the
corresponding figure was 31. 4 per cent. and if
recipients of housing benefit as a percentage of
tenant households are taken into consideration the
numbers of those living in poverty rises to 33 per
cent in Strathcl yde and 42 per cent in Gl asgow.
Stratchclyde Regional Council (1989).
98. Grieve Inquiry into Housing in Glasgow. 1986.
99. City Housing Glasgow. Housing Publications.
<1989a>. and City Housing Glasgow. <1990a).
100. City Housing Glasgow. Housing Publications.
(1989a>. p5.
101. C. Wright Mills <1971> p50.

-166-
CHAPTER TWO
EARLY POST-WAR HOUSING STRUGGLES
2.1 Introduction
There are many good, and some very good, studies of
the development of housing policy at both local and
national level (see, for instance, M. Bowl ey, 1945;
A. Gibb, 1982 and 1990; A. E. Holmans 1987; S.
Merrett 1979; and R. Smith & P. Whysall 1990) ).
However, most of these studies have a tendency to
concentrate on the 1 egisl ati ve and administrative
side to policy development. They have. thereby.
ignored or underepresented the significance of the
articulated demands of the working class for social
improvement and better, cheaper housing. The
material contained in this chapter suggests that
the collective demands of the working class, at an
apparently locality level, have been more decisive
in the development of housing policy than has been
acknowledged to date.
The discussion which follows is of a campaign
to prevent the sal e of 622 houses in the Merryl ee
Road council housing scheme on the South-side of
Glasgow in 1951-52. This was the first serious
attempt by a local authority in Britain to sell
houses that were initially intended for rental, and
took pI ace al most thirty years before the sal e of

-167-
council housing bee-ame a national issue. The
working class campaign f'or improved housing
provision in Glasgow had begun in the immediate
post-War years and the campaign to prevent the sale
of' council housing did not exist in isolation.
Theref'ore, a f'ull understandi ng of' the st.ruggl e f'or
the provision of council housing during this period
necessitates a discussion of the 1946 squatters
movement in GI asgow. which has received some
attention in the existing literature. (see B.
Saunders, 1974; and N. Anning et al 1980> Both of'
these campaigns reveal the extent to whi ch many
worki ng cl ass peopl e in GI asgow regarded counci I
housing as a significant f'actor in their daily
lives. They had, in the words of Melucci. a
• symbol ic investment' (1) in the provision of' publ ic
sector housing which led to a conflict. with t.he
pol itical establ ishment of the local state. This
symbolic investment was not a passing trend, but
was part of' an ongoing commi t. me nt t.o state-provided
housing for the working classes that had developed,
and had to be invoked, through a series of
political struggles over housing issues since the
late nineteenth cent.ury amongst labour
organisations in Glasgow. The Rent St.rike of 1915
and subsequent event.s were t.he most. obvious
exampl es. What is being suggested, then, is that

-168-
the val ues and meanings attached to the provision
of council housing arose within t,he context of
specific practices by historically situated actors
who were responding to the mat.erial living
conditions of Glasgow's working class.
\Vhi I e the campai gn t.o prevent the sal e of
council houses at Merryl ee began from a protest
initiated by building workers. it extended to
include other industrial workers, tenants'
organisations, wo me ns , groups and a myriad of other
working class organisations (see appendix to this
chapter>. From the spontaneous action by building
workers this struggle for housing to be provided on
the basis of need was t.o become a highly
significant form of political action in preventing
the sale of council housing in Glasgow during this
period, and for a long time to come.
Before discussing these issues it is essential
to both outl i ne the background to the debate on t.he
sal e of counci I houses and t.he nature of pol i t i cal
act, ion on housing issues in Glasgow in the
immediate post-War years. For reasons of cl ar i ty,
the debate on the sal e of council house sal es will
be restricted to the immediat.e post-war years. The
discussion on the squatting movement will be far
more extensive, as it is through an outline of the

-169-
events surrounding this movement that we can
identify the significance and centrality of housing
issues in working cl ass pol itics in the immediate
post-War years. From this discussion it should
become cl ear that the campaign against. the sal e of
council houses did not arise in a vacuum, but was
part of the ongoing struggl e for decent housi ng
waged by a large number of labour organisat.ions in
Glasgow during this period.
2.2 The Political Context 01' the Sale of Council
Houses 194.5-52
Debates about the sal e of council houses have
existed for as long as local authorities were given
the right to provide rented housing in 1919. In
f act, the 1890 Housing of the Working Cl asses Act
included a sect.ion which allowed local authorities
to build, convert and manage dwellings in clearance
areas; with the addition that any housing built. in
these areas had to be sol d off within ten years.
Permission to sell local authority houses had also
been granted before the Second World War. The
Housing Act of 1936 empowered local authorities to
sell council houses, with Ministerial approval. The
sale of council housing was refused consent during
the Second World War. The political debate,
however, only real 1 y took off after 194-5 when the

-170-
physical damage and shortages of resources severely
constrained housing pol icies. Housing, as aft.er the
First World War, was a major and pressing social
problem and housing shortages 'caused more anguish
and frustration than any other of the nation's
manifold post-war probl ems' . (2) While it. was
acknowledged that housing activity would need to be
expanded dramatically, t.here appears to have been
l i t tl e consensus about how thi s was t.o be achi e ved,
as Addison noted:
..... Strange to say. a coherent plan was lacking
in one o~ the most important areas of all, housing.
When at last a White Paper entitled Housing Policy
appeared in March 1945. i t was a vague and feeble
document of barely eight pages with no clear target
for the number o~ homes to be built in the post-war
period". (3)
The Labour government had withdrawn the
commitment made in the 194-5 election manifesto to
set up a Ministry of Housing. Aneurin Bevan. as
Minister for Health in the first majority Labour
government, was given responsibility for providing
a solution to the housing problem and was at least
clear about the approach which should be adopted to
sol ve the 'hous i ng probl em' :

-171-
"Before the war the housing problems of the
middl e cl asses were. rougbl y. sol ved. The higher
I ncome groups had the i r houses; the lower i nCOJBe
groups had not. Speculative buIlders. supported
enthusiastically, and even voraciously. by money-
lending organisations, solved the problem of the
higher income groups in the matter of housing. We
propose to start at the other end. We propose to
start to solve, first, the housing di~ficulties of
the lower income groups. In other words. we propose
to lay the main emphasis of our programme upon
building houses to let. That means that we shall
ask Local Authorities to be the main instruments
for the housing progra.JlDDe."(4)
Bevan's approach to housing problems was quite
simple: council housing was for everyone. He was
vehementl y opposed to the who I e pre-war system of
house building, which had produced , castrated
communi ties' More part. i cuI arl y, according to
Bevan, the provision of 'good houses for poor
peopl e' could not be achieved through t.he
dependence on the speculative builders who, by
their very nature, were not. a , pI annable
instrument' The guiding principal of this pol icy
was that new housing should he distributed
according to social need rather than market forces.

-172-
Bevan believed that only local authorities who were
democratically controlled could ensure that houses
went to those in greatest need. One consequence of
this policy was that building for private ownership
was restricted by licence, which was for the
purposes of , suppl ement i ng the main housing
programme and not for diverting building labour and
materials' . (5)
Bevan also insisted that council housing should
be of a high qual ity. as proposed by the post-War
Dudley Committee. In some respects, this policy was
successful and in 1948 nearly 200,000 public sector
houses were built. However, the Labour government's
commitment to increased public expenditure on
housing had already been cut back in 1947 with the
cancellation of Lend Lease, the system of American
wartime aid to Europe. The economic crisis was
related to Britain's poor trading position and
other claims on public expenditure and, by July
1947 the American loan agreed at Bretton Woods had
been used up, which led to a convert~bility crisis
and suspension of the loan. The financial crisis of
1947 led to cuts in the housing programme and the
number of houses built under Labour after 1948
decl ined. (6) In Scotland the revised target for
house building in 1947, as announced by the

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Secretary o£ State during the £inancial crisis, was
put at 24,000 a reduct ion o£ around 50 per cent.
Nevertheless, the commitment to the provision of
council housing remained:
" ••• it is contrary to the Goveru.ent's pol icy
to agree at the present time to the sale of council
houses in view o~ the importance of ensuring that
as many houses as possible are avaIlable f'or
letting to persons JOOst in need of' the.". (7)
The Labour government, however, were judged on
their ability to meet the overall targets for house
building they had set themsel ves. The targets for
Engl and and Wal es were 240,000 new houses a year.
In 1947 no more than hal f that number were buil t:
139,690. While the Labour government nationalized
some maJ or industries, neither the I and nor the
house-building industry came into public-ownership.
Unlike the Health and Education services, there
were no equivalent long-term pol icy proposals in
the field of housing. Council housing continued to
be financed in the traditional way through
borrowing, money raised from the rates and £rom the
rents paid by tenants. Inevitably, restrictions and
cutbacks placed on the housing programme in 1947,
and again in 1949, contributed to the defeat of the
Labour government in the 1951 general el ecti on. A

-174-
central part of the Conservati ves' election
campaigns of 1950 and 1951 wa.s the promise to do
better than Labour on the housing issue: the post-
War housing 'numbers game' It is worthwhile
remembering that, though the Labour Party lost the
1951 election, they obtained more votes than the
Conservatives. Indeed, the Labour Party vote of
13.95 mill ion was the highest ever achieved by a
pol itical party in Britain (see A. Calder, 1969; A.
Sinfield, 1989; and B. Williamson, 1990).
The Conservative government that was elected in
1951 had a commitment to build 300,000 houses a
year. The task of achieving this target was
entrusted to Harol d Macmill an, who was appointed
Minister of Housing and Local Government. The
Conservat i ve government was al so committed to the
reI axat ion of Ii censi ng and the encouragement of
pol icies for sal e. Their manifesto for the 1951
election had made this clear by pledging that one
half of the houses allocated to local councils
would be allowed to be built for sale. Under the
Labour government, four-fifths of the houses were
built for local councils or housing associations of
a pub I ic character I et at subs idised rents, and
one-fifth for private ownershIp, mainly houses
buil t to sell to pri vate owners. This change of

-175-
policy was in line with the very clever slogan of a
• property owning democracy', adopted by the
leadership of the Conservative party after the
Second World War. Throughout the period of the
1945-51 Labour government this slogan came to
symbolise the Conservative opposition's alternative
housing pol icies, and was to become more evident
when they gained power:
..... we wish to see the widest possible
distribution 0-1 property. We think. that. 0-1 all
-IorlOS 0-1 property suitable -lor such distribution
house property Is one of' the best. 01 (8)
Setting out the new Conservative government's
policy on housing in the King's Speech in November
1951, Harol d Macmi 11 an conf identl y emphas i sed the
virtues of home ownership, by proposing to allow
the sale of council houses. The government issued a
general consent which enabled local authorities to
carry out sales and only to notify the Minister on
completion. The ideological and political debate on
the role of council housing within governmental
circles was being reformulated. The • property
owning democracy' advocated by the Conservative
party in 1945 was now to become a reality, or so
the Minister supposed.

-176-
2.3 No Homes ~or the Heroes
The housing situation in Glasgow at the end o£
the Second World War was, quite simply, desperate.
Housing remained 'the largest public health
problem' in the city. During the war the
Corporation had repeatedly made representations to
the government for facilities to complete such
houses as they were at that time permitted to
£ i nish. In March 1940 a number o£ Glasgow
councillors met with the Minister of Health and the
Secretary of State £or Scotland to stress the need
for continuing to build houses in Glasgow during
the war. a resul t of this meeting, the
Corporation were given permission to develop the
Penilee scheme (1,500 houses), and to build houses
at Berryknowes Road, HoI mf aul dhead Dr i ve and part
o£ the (Old) Pollok scheme. These special measures
were simpl y inadequate conSidering the extent o£
the housing problem in Glasgow. In answer to a
questionnaire sent out by the Clyde Valley Planning
AdVisory Committee in 1944, Glasgow Corporation
acknowledged that the city would require a minimum
o£ 100,000 new houses to meet the needs of the
popul ation. Gl asgow' s popul ation was estimated to
be around 1,050,000 in 1946. In the first two post-

-177-
war years the Corporation had only built 3,684 new
houses of which 1,465 were temporary houses. (9)
While the city did not suffer the same physical
damage from bombing campaigns, as other British and
European cities. the housing conditions in
Glasgow's slums in 194-5 were the worst in Western
Europe. wi th more overcrowdi ng than even post-war
bomb-battered Hamburg. The older houses in the city
were in a state of advanced decay and the fact that
many houses had to be demol ished onl y served to
aggravate the probl em. The pressure on avail abl e
housing was acute as demobilisation increased
rapidly. An additional factor was, I ike other
cities, Glasgow was to be caught up in the post-war
, baby-boom', as young peopl e married and sought
homes of their own. There were 100,000 people
living in sub-let rooms, and 130,4-35 houses (44-.2%
of the city's housing stock) were judged to be
overcrowded. Sub-letting of rooms was a highly
profitable venture, as the City Assessor
recogni sed:
II _. In the Townh.ead Ward. one f'aJIlily are tenants
of 18 houses. In this Ward. one tenant paying a
rent of' £50 Os 5d. f'or an eight apartJBent house.
draws from nine sub-tenants £215 16s . . . "(10)

-178-
Of course. thi s expl 0 i tat i on was not new to
Glasgow and was really a continuation of the 'made-
down' dwellings for the unskilled-poor which had
existed from at least the middle of the nineteenth
century. The tenement stock, mainly concentrated in
the inner urban wards, suffered from an appalling
lack of basic amenities, with over 50% of all
houses hav i ng no bath, and 37.5% having to share
W/C facilities. (II) Tuberculosis and other diseases
bred by insanitary conditions were rife, as were
the rats around the open middens and drains in the
backcourts where children pI ayed. Glasgow
Corporation had 95,000 applications for houses,
41,000 of whom had no homes of their own. (12) There
was widespread suspicion that .. council houses were
not going to those in greatest need, and that
people in very prominent positions got houses with
very little trouble. The Corporation's response to
these accusations was that, the peopl e making the
allegations were 'never prepared to give the names
and addresses of the persons whom they allege were
given preferential treatment'. (13) It was a strange
and secret i ve way to run an all ocat i on system and
ignored the solidarity of working class families,
even in these diverse conditions:

-179-
" •. Peopl e ~ul d hear o-C somebody who wisnae in
as bad a position as them getting a hoose, and they
were convinced that they were on the waiting list
before them. But the greatest ploy o-C the housing
authorities at that time was •• eh•• "you tell us the
name of the person'. Well, you see, there was a
loyal ty among the ~rking class and they didnae
want to do this kind of thing, and they said "it's
no up to to me tae tell yeo. I know of innumerable
people who were desperate for hooses and who should
have had hooses long before they got them. Of <H·>
For those who were fortunate enough to have a
house the conditions were deplorable, and Harry
McShane with his customary precision was correct in
suggestIng that, 'We see.. tragedies which would
tax the efforts of a thousand Shakespeares to
portray in an accurate manner'. <15) These peopl e
also found themselves in a paradoxical situation of
apparent powerlessness, as one commentator noted:
"A horrible existence. and yet the unfortunates
who were compel I ed to live there were af'raid to
complain lest they should antagonise the landlord
or I andl ady and be evicted. To them a "home" of
the I r own in even the foul est tenement ~ul d be
considered a godsend. To possess a rent book
showing that they were the of'ficial tenants of even

-180-
the most mediocre habitation ~ a dream which they
hardl y hoped to real i se. II ( 16 >
It was inevitabl e, given these conditions,
that housing issues maintained a high political
profile in post-War Glasgow. No doubt an added
dimension to this situation was the hope that many
people held for a better future and social Justice
after the war (see, for instance, A. Calder, 1969;
and B. Williamson, 1990), The growing feeling of
determination to avoid a return to pre-War level s
of poverty and unemployment had been recognised as
a danger by Conservative spokespersons as early as
1944:
" •.• It-, you do not gi ve the peopl e social
re-rorm. they are going to give you social
revolutlon••••• "(17)
2.4 Squatting
As in other British towns and cities, the
conditions outl ined above, I ed to the development
of a highly organised squatters movement in
GI asgow. (18) Throughout 1946 fami! ies of squatters
began moving into various unoccupied properties
throughout the city including hotel s, churches,
mansion houses, a hospi tal. the premises of the
GI asgow Press CI ub, Army Camps and former warders'
quarters at Barl innie Prison. Many of these

-181-
properties had previously been condemned by
government surveyors. The reasoning behind the
squatters action was simple. as one of their
spokespersons at the time pOinted out:
"We are all decent working folk. and we are
desperate for some pi ace in which to I ive. I have
five children, their ages ranging from four to
sixteen. and one of them being bedridden. During my
aarried 1 ife I have only once had a sub-let house.
My name has been on the Corporation waiting l i s t
for 11 years."(19)
In other words. to gain one of the most basic
of human needs, a shel ter, working class ·famil ies
had to take direct action and occupy buildings that
were often without heat i ng, I ighting or sanitary
conveniences. There was no council housing
avail abl e for them, and had not been for some
years. The squatters and their families moved into
vacant properties and chal ked their names on the
doors of tenement apartments that had been I yi ng
disused for up to ten years (this was the common
way of • booki ng in') . Many of the squatters had
fought in the Second World War and some of them had
been living in sub-let rooms for a number of years
and had been waiting up to ten years for a home of
their own. Their aspirations for a better future

-182-
were being tested. and they took the only action
available to them to alleviate their situation. On
one occasion a prominent member of the Glasgow
Communist Party. Johnny Gold. spent the night
cutting his way through the back wall of a building
which was lying empty and later opened the doors
from the inside and admitted a large number of
squatters. (20)
The squatters, or more precisely homeless
people, began to occupy empty premises and
organised themselves into Defence Committees. They
were supported by various tenants' associations.
the Communist Party. and the remaining elements in
the I.L.P. Some of the defence committees collected
a weekly payment from squatters to cover rent, fuel
and electricity charges. The Glasgow Committee of
the Communist Party were actively involved in
taking over vacant property and helping families to
move into unnocupied buildings. In Govan, the local
tenants' association gave over their offices to two
families of squatters. By this stage, squatting had
become firmly established on the City's political
agenda and in the consciousness of GI asgow' s
working class. In Lanarkshire, 500 miners came out
on strike for one week in support of seven families
of squatters evicted from the Plean colliery

-183-
company's houses. A play written by Robert McLeish
and performed by Glasgow Unity Theatre- The Gorbals
Story- high! ighted the pI ight of the homel ess and
those I iving in overcrowded conditions in Glasgow.
A group of squatters were the guests of GI asgow
Unity at one of their performances at Queens
Theatre. When Peter McIntyre, one of the leaders of
the squatters' movement in the West of Scotl and,
made a speech on behal f of GI asgow' s home I ess on
this occassion, the Lord Provost and other
dignitaries were apparently 'squirming' in their
seats. (21) The Economist, as part of its overall
attack on the Labour government, momentarily
adapted its pol itical principles and offered
support for the squatting movement:
"In a country so law-abiding as Great Britain
it is at ways rel'reshi ng when the peopl e take the
I aw into their own hands on an issue on whi ch the
spirit of Justice, if not its letter, is so
eminently on their side."(22)
Throughout the autumn months of 1946 the number
of squatters in GI asgow increased to around 1500
families. They were met with a predictable response
from property owners, the Corporat ion and central
government. In early September 1946 a special
meeting of the Property Owners and Factors

-184--
Association expressed concern at the government's
lack of action in protecting private property:
liThe goverDJDent. said a spokesman. _ •• have found
an apparent solution so far as their own property
is concerned. but they have signally failed to do
anything about the invasion of' private property by
squatters". (23)
The 'solution' was the governments' discussion
of a proposal to allow the squatters to occupy Army
camps. Governmental directi ves were not slow in
coming under such pressure. On 19th September 194-6
the Secretary of State for Scotland, in the first
majority Labour government, issued a directive to
local authorities asking them to take 'firm and
positive action in defence of ordered government
and the principles of social justice, on which the
allocation of housing was based'~ (24-)
However. in Glasgow at least. the local state.
in the form of the police force, were already
actively involved in taking action in 'defence of
ordered government'. In late August and early
September 194-6 a number of squatters families were
evicted from properties throughout the city. In one
case the police evicted a family at two o'clock in
the morning following complaints from property
owners. Workers employed by the United Co-operative

-185-
Baking Society forcibly evicted a party of
squatters supported by Harry McShane and others.
who had taken possession of the Grand Hotel in the
Charing Cross area of the city on the 29th of
August 1946. The squatters, who included one family
of 13, resisted the eviction and some fighting took
place, but the police finally stepped in to
'restore order'. On the same evening police evicted
13 families from the Bellgrove Hotel in Gal I owgate.
This group of squatters attempted to break down the
doors and regain entry to the buil di ng. but were
prevented from doing so when police reinforcements
were called to the scene. some squatters barricaded
themsel ves into the properties they occupied and
one of the leader'" s of the GI asgow squatters, Mr
Peter McIntyre. after meeting with the Chief
Constable, suggested that resistance would be
carried even to the point of physical force:
"I think. i t would be a tragedy to have a social
upheaval in Glasgow, but as matters stand it may be
necessary to resist police action physically'. (25)
Possibly in an attempt to diffuse such
situations. the government had proposed that the
Service camps which had been occupied by squatters
coul d be converted into temporary hous i ng, with
rental charges ranging from 7s6d to lOs per week.

-186-
The squatters themselves had already suggested that
they should be allowed to run the camps on a non-
pro-fit-making basis until new local authority
houses became avaliable. The squatters' leaders
also requested that all large houses which were up
-for sale or unoccupied should be requisitioned and
squatters allowed to remain. In any event, a-fter a
meeting between the squatters' leaders and
o-fficials -from the Scottish O-f-fice, the Joint.
Under-Secretary o-f State -for Scotl and, Mr George
Buchanan, withdrew the proposal and suggested that
squatters would neither be allowed to run their own
camps or co-operate with the government or local
authorities in running them. This was in con-fl ict
with an earl ier statment by the Secretary o-f State
for Scotl and that he was prepared to gi ve local
authorities a 100 per cent grant 'towards the cost
of adapting huts and vacant houses into suitable
houses -for the home I ess·. Buchanan al so adopted a
more -forthright response to the general issue of
squatting:
"such invasions of private premises are a
challenge to the law of the land. In the interests
01: the vast majority of law-abiding citizens the
law must take its course". (26)

-187-
This condemnation of squatting was no doubt
related to the fact that the Communist Party had
become involved in moving families into vacant
property, and the political threat was being taken
seriously. Nevertheless, under the pleadings of
property owners, the law was already taking its own
course in Glasgow. In mid-September 1946 the first
arrests of squatters in Glasgow were made in a
number of police raids in the early hours of the
morning. These squatters, who had occupied a number
of private properties, were charged with
trespassing, a criminal offence in Scotl and since
the HighI and cl earances. The Trespass (Scotl and)
Act of 1865 made it a criminal offence to 'lodge in
any premises or encamp on any land which is private
p.roperty without the consent or permission of the
owner or legal occupier'. The maximum penalty is a
fine and imprisonment up to 21 days. The squatters
were not put off easily by this action and were
prepared to fight the charges made against them.
This was made clear by McIntyre at a packed meeting
in St Andrews Hall:
"We are prepared to face that charge. and we
are prepared to ~ight it with the best legal brains
in this country_ That ease will start in the
ordinary Magistrate's Court but will finish in the

-188-
House Lords. That will take about three
years". (27)
However. the occupation o£ private property was
treated far more seriousl y than the occupation of
Army camps. While the squatters had directed their
activities to "publ ic" premises I ike service camps,
they represented little threat to the law and to
the principle of private property. The invasion of
pri vate property was a di fferent matter, as one
commentator has noted:
" .•• Such invasions o£ property, even in the
prevail ing eircuastances. struck a raw nerve and
the authorities resorted to the law 0" trespass,
the police and disconnection 0" gas and electricity
in order to get the squatters out . . . ". (28)
So even under a majority Labour government the
interests of' private property were seen as
paramount and. while Bevan 'sympathised with the
squatters he could not allow them to take
command' . (29) In contrast the government final I y

~
bowed to the growing pressure for acc~modation and
allowed the squatters to occupy the Army camps. The
fact that there were 46,335 people occupying 1,181
camps throughout Engl and and INal es, (and another
7,000 in Scotland), by October 1946 may have had
s omethi ng to do wi th thi s. In one sense thi s may

-189-
have taken some of the pressure off the government
to prov i de hous i ng; though in another respect it
was actually increasing the pressure by pointing to
the fail ures of provision. However, the -fact that
the Communist Party was actively involved in
helping squatters to take over private properties,
firstly on a small scale in Glasgow but more
particularly in London, had something to do with
the differential treatment. The government was
certainly fearful o-f the criticisms of housing
policy being made by the Communist Party, and more
so because o-f it's opportunistic involvement in the
squatting movement. The -fears were heightened when
local Communist branches in London displayed
advertisments for unfurnished -flats and brought
together a group of squatters, few of whom were
Communist party members, and moved them into empty
luxury -flats at Duchess of Bedford House in
Kensington. These fl ats were owned by Lord
II chester and other peers, and were obviously
chosen for the publicity that would be forthcoming.
It became known as • the Great Sunday Squat'. The
squatters immediatel y elected an emergency
committee to represent them in negotiations with
the government and the local Council. Cabinet
meetings were held to discuss the matter and amid
accusations of , anarchy' squatting became

-190-
pol it i call y threatening. The leaders of the
Communist Party were clearly aware of the political
potential of this kind of social protest, and
expressed their critique of the state's dilemma in
unambiguously class terms:
HAll thi s tal k about the I i bert y of the
individual and the sacred rights of private
property. and about the forces of anarchy that have
been let loose is merely a cover for panic attempts
to preserve the system of rich and poor, of
homeless and those with more than one home.
These seizures will stop when local authorities
carry out their responsibilities to the homeless,
and when the Government over ides those Tory-
dominated local council s". (30)
This spread of squatting, organised by the
Communist Party. to private property apparently
lost the squatters some of the • publ ic sympathy'
they had previously experienced (if Judged by
contemporary newspaper reports). In any event the
state acted swi ftl y to curtail these developments.
For instance. at a cabinet meeting on the 12th
September 1946, it was agreed. on the basis of
police intellegence. that 'there was risk of these
activities spreading throughout the country' and
that:
-191-
"Ministers considered that further steps should
be taken to br ing i t home to the publ ic that the
squatters ~re overriding the claims of many people
who bad been waiting a long time for houses. and
that the effect of their activities would be to
delay the completion of the rehousing
progra.JBJDe··. (31)
Alongside press accusations of 'queue jumping',
the government was making it clear that the
expropriation of private property would not be
tolerated. Five members of the Communist Party were
arrested on the very serious charges of 'criminal
conspiracy', and conspiring to incite trespass, in
the Kensington case. Eviction orders were served by
the High Court and the squatters vacated the
premises peacefully. They were found guilty of
trespass and bound over for two years. The fact
that they were treated I enientl y by the courts
meant that this affair came to a satisfactory end
for both the government and those who faced these
charges, but the squatters remained home I esse
Alongside the state's legal repression and coercion
of the squatting movement there were a number of
short-term policy responses, as Short has noted:
" .. _ Dwell ings were requisitioned, premises
converted, repairs hurriedly made to houses and

-192-
prefabricated dwellIngs were constructed. By 1948
al:most 125,000 • prefabs' had been bull t. AI though
buil t as a short-term sol utlon~ JDany of them lasted
Into the 1970s •.• -. (32)
Short, however, has overstated the case for the
influence of squatting here. The prefab programme
had al ready started under the Hous i ng <Temporary
Accomodation> Act 1944, which had been passed to
allow local authorities to ignore bylaws governing
building standards. However, the squatting movement
provided a necessary stimul ant to many di I atory
local authorities and did not end at this Juncture
<people in Glasgow continued to occupy Army camps
and condemned properties throughout the 1940s and
late 1950s). The authorities were still trying to
evict famil ies of squatters from condemned
properties they had occupied for a number of years
in 1949. In one case the demolition squad refused
to carry out their work until the families decided
to move out. The squatters own experience of the
stigma attached to their 'lifestyle' was not always
a happy one, as one contemporary account suggested:
" . . . Life is a fight, not only against
authority. dirt. col d. da.JlllP. heat. illness and
rats. but against one's own growing apathy.
Families begin to crack. at dlf:ferent periods. On

-193-
the f'aces of' SOJDe there is a look of' strain, of'
controlled dspafr. such as soldiers show when they
have seen too much action. At the ca.p co. .ittees
they say. quite plainly. there is a I iJDit to huJDan
endurance. They I ive near the edge of that I iJDit.
fearing that SOJDe day they will slip over". (33)
These people of the abyss did not slip over,
and along with tenants' associations and other
labour organisations in Glasgow they protested
against cuts in the building programme which were a
result of the reduced allocation given to the city
in the Government's 1947 Housing Programme. (34) The
continual presence of squatters meant that the case
for the provision of council housing was
reinforced. By highlighting the inadequacies of the
housing situation the squatters appealed to the
aspirations of a radicalised working class
population in post-War Britain and put pressure on
the government to ful fill the promises they had
made, or more precisely in the case of housing, the
promises they had not made in 194-5. Squatting is
sometimes portrayed in the media as anarchistic and
individualistic. However, the squatting which took
place in GI asgow, and other towns and cities
throughout Britain, between 1946 and 1950 was the
antithesis; it was collectively based, organised

-194-
from within the working class and had a collective
goal in mind: public sector housing for all.
2.4 Housing For Need Not Profit: Merrylee
The provision of decent housing continued to be
given high priority in Glasgow in the early 1950s,
and was of major concern to the people of the city.
whose numbers were at a post-war peak of 1.089,555.
The 1951 census showed an overall density of 400
persons per acre, a density unparallelled in any
other British city. (see Table 2: 1) Some 86,592
people were living in single apartments, and a
further 350,739 in two-apartment fl ats, and the
result of being forced to live in these conditions
continued to have a deleterious effect on the
health of the population. Much of this housing was
owned by pri vate 1 andl ords, with the Corporation
being responsible for slightly less than one-third
of all the houses in the city.

-195-
Table 2. 1: Principal cities or Britain. statistics
relating to housing conditions 1951.
City % or dwellings % or population households
with 1 or 2 living at :more lacking
rooJaS. than 2 persons ala rixed
per roolD. bath
Glasgow 41.5 24-.4 50. 1
Manchester 0.5 2. 1 33
BirIDingba.JD 0.5 3.3 38
Leeds 2.0 2.6 28
Liverpool 1.1 6.0 36
London 2.7 2.5 44
Shef':f'ield 0.6 2.5 '{'5
Source: Census, 1951.
The pol icy of' the housing department' at this
time was to build the 'Maximum Number of' Houses in
the Shortest Possible Time'. (35) The practical
outcome of' such a pol icy was the building of' the
four peripheral estates, (Castl emil k, Drumchapel,
Easterhouse and Pollok), which eventually contained
10 per cent of the city's popul ation, as well as
many other council housing schemes. These events
have been well documented el sewhere, and need not
detain us here. However. one other significant

-196-
event occurred in Glasgow during this period which
has gained little recognition. We have already seen
in an earlier section of this- paper that the
• Housing Crusade' announced by Harold Macmillan
gave local authorities the power to sell council
housing. This pol icy was taken up with a vengance
by the Progressive controlled Corporation of
Glasgow in September of 1951. This Progressive
council was a complete anomaly in post-war Glasgow,
as Labour had domInated control of the council
since 1933. The events surroundIng the proposal to
sell council houses, then beIng built at Merrylee
Road, were summed up br i efl y I n one contemporary
account:
..... The Progressives proposed to o""er a. nuBber
0" Council-buil t houses "or sale. This was a aove
of ordinary Justice and ordinary common sense •••• In
vain did Progressive candidates argue that every
house sold was a relie" to the rates. and in va.in
did they point out that a re:ma.rkable number 0"

Social ist Councillors were enjoing a rent subsidy.
There were deJ80nstrations and threats of strikes.
and the Socialists were returned~n the claim that
it was the blackest reaction to interfere with the
sacred principle of something "or nothing. It was a
curious and saddening instance 0" how "ar

-197-
bitterness and bigotry have penetrated the
prol etarian .ind"'. (36)
This is how one contemporary right-wing
commentator summed up the debate about the proposed
sal e of council houses at the Merryl ee Road scheme
in Glasgow in 1951-52. This account is not only
derisory and malicious but, as we will see, totally
inaccurate. Indeed, there were strikes to support
the campaign and people did not want 'something for
nothing', but council houses they could rent rather
than houses for sale.
In May of 1951, the Housing Committee of
GI asgow Corporation first discussed a government
allocation of 500 houses to be built under building
licences for sale to approved categories of
purchasers. This was the first indication that the
Corporation, then control I ed by the Progressives,
was intending to give some priority to building
houses for sal e rather than to let, despite the
f act that there were over 100,000 peopl e on the
waiting list. It is important to remember that the
Labour government, while ideologically exhausted,
was still in power at this point, and the
Progressives in Glasgow were pursuing this policy
before the 1951 Conservative government had reduced
building controls. The Progressives, I ike their

-198-
predecessors in the Moderate Party and before that
the Citizens Union, were essentially Conservatives.
Local Progressive associations in Glasgow, while
corresponding to the Conservative Parliamentary
associations, also attracted support from Liberals
and those who wished to see local pol itics being
kept independent from national party pol itics.
However, Progressi ve candidates were supported by
the Scottish Unionist Association. They represented
an anti-Labour front and had close ties with the
local bourgeoisie; most of their members being
local businessmen. (37) The direction that the
Progressive's policy was to take became clear with
the proposal to sell off the houses at the Merrylee
scheme, whi ch was moved by the Progress i ve 1 eader
of the Council, Mr Alexander Macpherson- Rait, on
the 5th of September 1951. The reasoni ng behi nd
such moves were given as economic, with Macpherson-
Rait arguing that those who could pay and own their
own houses shoul d be allowed to free the local
authority of the necessity of subsidising them,
adding that:
..... the Labour idea. seemed to be that building
should be f'or one class only. and that until that
class were satisf'ied nobody else should have a
house". (38)
-199-
This attack on the ~inancing of council housing
was part of a wider debate on the new Conservative
housing pOlicy. A leading article in the London
Times, commenting on housing subsidies, suggested
that the new procedure 'will save public funds even
i~ it does not increase the vol ume of new
housing' . (39) However, while referring to the
economics of housing to justify the proposal,
Macpherson-Rait had given some intimation that
there were also ideological motives behind the
move. This I atter aspect was to be borne out by
subsequent events. When the Housing Committee
f i naIl y approved the recommendat ion to offer for
sale the houses then being built at the Merrylee
Road scheme, this ideology was outlined clearly in
the City Assessors report which stated that:
II • • • the houses 'Were super i or in construct i on
and finish to houses being built and sold by
private builders and 'Were situated in what from a
• val uation" viewpoint was the best residential
district in the city. The cost of upkeep should be
low and the amenity value high for many years. If
all the houses 'Were sol d to private owners they
should retain also the value appertaining' to a
II good address". (40)

-200-
In other words, these houses 'Were of a very
high quality, being one of only two 'high-amenity'
council housing schemes built in Glasgow in the
post-war years. Buil t under the provisions of the
1946 Housing Act. as a contribution to the reI ief
of overcrowding, 204 of the houses were of the
'cottage type' the remainder being tenement flats.
The estimated cost of building the 622 houses at
Merrylee was £1,159,072, but with interest over 60
years the ultimate cost would be £3,073,980: 'a sum
sufficient to build 1650 houses'. (41) Despite the
fact that they were originally intended for rent.
the Progressi ves had decided that they should be
sold for prices ranging from £1,575 for a ground-
floor three-apartment flat to £2,475 for an end-
terrace five-apartment house. These prices were
equivalent to those which were being paid for
similar houses erected for sale in the private
sector, and clearly indicates the alternative
hierarchy of respectability behind the ideology to
sell rather than I et such houses: good qual i ty
housing should not be subsidised! No doubt these
prices were beyond the reach of the 100,000 people
on the waiting I ist in Glasgow and would only
appeal to those wi th the capi tal to buy them.
Corporation tenants at this time 'Were paying a
weekly rent of around 15s(75p> or £1 and were

-201-
unlikely candidates for houses that would cost them
£3 a \oI7eek pI us a downpayment of £250. What this
real I y meant was that. ability to pay had become
the determining factor in obtaining a house in the
Merryl ee scheme. In this respect the Progressives
\oI7ere attempt i ng to radical I y change the nature of
the provision of housing by local authorities,
which earned them the title of 'the most ractionary
local authority in Britain' . (42) They even met with
some opposition from private builders who, perhaps,
feared the competition and wanted a larger share of
the profits for themselves:
"The Corporation's idea to sell the houses to
peopl e wi th the DK>ney to buy them and so tak.e a
burden o~f the ratepayer is an admirable one, but
i~ we got the licences we could do exactly the SaBe
thing"". (43)
However these protests \oI7ere mild compared with
what was to follow. The first signs of unrest
amongst building workers in the city came when the
Housing Convener sent a personal message of thanks
to them in their pay packets. The message thanked
the men for their help in 'this year of solid
achievement for all of us engaged in the formidable
task of providing housing accomodation for
GI asgow' s overcrowded and homel ess f ami I ies·. The

-202-
building workers on the large Cranhill site in the
East End of the city were not easily impressed by
this and sent the letters back. with a clear
indication of their own feelings on the matter:
If We think thi s i s downright cheek and
hypocrisy, viewing the recent decision pushed
through by you to sell the 622 Merrylee houses
which a.re being built by our fellow-workers and
were originally intended for rent"'. (44)
The chall enge to the proposal to sell the
houses at Merryl ee was onl y begi nni ng. On the 3rd
December 1951 a meeting. called by the Joint-shop
stewards committee of G. and J. Weir, an
engineering firm situated near the Merryl ee site.
and attended by over 100 delegates from 20
organisations, mostly building and engineering
trade unions, tenants' a.ssociations, three
counc i II ors and some Labour Party branches call ed
for a demonstratIon in George Square for the 6th
December. the day the full CorporatIon were to
decide on the proposal to sell the houses. They
al so proposed that a deputat i on, I ncl udi ng shop
stewards from 48 factories and works in the city.
should seek to put theIr views on the matter to the
Housing Committee, again in the Image .of the 1915
Rent Strike. This meet i ng was al so addressed by

-203-
three Labour members of the Corporatlon-
councillors Andrew Hood, John Mains and Bailie John
Johnston. The I atter of these speakers described
the homes-for-sale proposal as "class legislation
with a vengance". (45) The campaign to stop the sale
of the houses was seen as a major challenge by the
labour movement in Glasgow and was to be conducted
both inside the City Chambers and on the streets
outside. There was also to be a challenge for
control of the direction that such a campaign would
take. Official press reports at the time suggest
that between 2,000 and 5,000 demonstrators took
part in the protest on a bleak and wet day, though
the experience of people on the demonstration
suggest that this does not convey the atmosphere
created by the plan to sell these houses. For
instance, one participant has described the events
thus:
"I ~ In the demonstration and I'll never
forget It to my dying day. It ~ a massive
demonstration and, talk about storming the
Bastille. ~ nearly storued the City Chambers that
day . . . . They had the whole o' the police force oot,
It must have been k.lnda I ike what 1915 wis, when
the shoP. stewards had a massive demonstration wI
the wi_In in there about the Rent Act . . . . the

-204--
wi_in wanted the best for their k.ids, they were
still waiting for Corporation houses and here this
Corporation was talking about this beautiful scheae
oot in Merrylee. and Just because i t was Merrylee
we wurnie going to be allowed to go and live in It,
because if they had opened i t up to the ordi nary
people you see they would have had the Jack. of a'
things living In these hooses. These wimmin were
incensed with the idea of sell ing hooses at that
particular time, when there was such a need and
such a deJDand for new housing•••• Any mention of
selling houses was anathema to the people who were
desperate to get oot 0' the horrible conditions
they were Ii vin in . . . I never have been in a
de:.onstration I ike it, and I've been in a lot of
de:.onstrations • . . . the anger overflowed right onto
the city chambers . . . we JDarched right roon into the
city chambers. and that gives you an indication of
the ire against sell ing council houses". (4-6)
The demonstrators included tenants'
associations engineering workers, workers from
Stephens and John Brown Shipyards, transport
workers, and there were five processions of
, housewi ves' from Bridgeton, Gorbal s. Anderston,
Partick and Tradeston; all united to stop the sale
of the Merrylee houses. (47) All of those present on

-205-
the demonstration had been mobil ised through
meetings held in factories. building sites and in
working class communities throughout the city. As
the quotation just cited suggests, the wimmin
(\o\.1Omen) of Glasgow were prominent in this protest
but, unsurprisingly, their role is diminished in
the contemporary newspapers to a sentence at the
end of a story. Most of these \o\.1Omen were active in
local tenants' associations and had a deeper
understanding of the appalling housing conditions
in the city than most of their contemporaries. It
was the women, when speaking at publ ic meetings,
who were able to provide graphic details of rotting
flooring. damp and broken ceilings, examples of
I avatories serving at I east 33 tenants and rats
under floors which was to playa significant part
in impressing upon others the need to oppose the
sale of the Merrylee houses. Therefore, their
participation in this campaign should not be seen
as an addition to the protests of the tenants'
associations, building and engineering workers, but
rather as a central and powerful part of the whole
struggle for council housing. The women involved in
this campaign were able to use their lived
experience in the tenement slums to attack the
proposal to sell off local authority houses.
Another significant point about this demonstration

-206-
is that most, if not all, of the Corporation
building-site workers downed tools and Joined the
demonstrators. They were consciously involving
themselves in a political strike and not simply a
strike aimed at their employers. In an industry
which is historically renowned for being insecure,
split along the lines of craft and with relatively
weak trade unions, this was no mean feat. Their
oppos it ion to the proposal to sell the houses at
Merrylee was spelled out in a poem:
Were you there at George Square the time
They .arched from every site,
The lads who build the people's homes,
But sleep in sluBS at night?
From single-end, from back street den
Mothers with children spill.
Bringing before the business men
The challenge of Barnhill .•
The Tories are the men of greed,
The Party of the boss,
They build their case on weal th, not
need,
And JDOck the people's loss.

-207-
But smash the Tory pI ans we will.
Starting with Merrylee.
Resisting them with all our skill.
We'll fight to victory. (48)
<* Barnhill was a 'Poorhouse').
Many of the buil ding workers were themsel ves
living in overcrowded conditions or were homeless,
and this no doubt added to the anger at the
decision to sell the Merrylee houses. Some of the
demonstrators· at the front of the march on the 6th
of December tried to storm into the building, as
one report suggested:
"Pol ice and official s on the doorway were
having a rough time trying to hold them at bay, but
pol ice reinforcements were soon forthcoming from
inside the building.
Comparative order was restored after the
closing of the wrought-iron gates outside the City
ChaJDbers". (49)
However, some of the demonstrators managed to
gain access to the City Chambers and delayed the
start of the meeting, with at least one of them
being ejected for making a noisy protest. <50) While
there were 30 I etters of protest against the sal e
of the Merrylee houses, including 16 requests for

-208-
deputations to be recieved, the Progressives
decided that they would only be willing to accept a
deputation f'rom GI asgow Trades Council. The
Progressives argued that the Trades Council should
be heard as they represented the vast majority of'
trade unionists in the city. The Labour Group
argued that all the deputations should be heard.
and that the Trades Council had been chosen by the
Progressives because they believed. rightly or
wrongl y. that they were a Communist organisation,
and their protests could therefore easil y be
labelled as extreme. The Progressives' were intent
on providing a dilemma for the Labour Party through
• guil t by association' with the Communist Party.
Andrew Hood, who was a leading figure in the ILP in
the inter-war years and eventually became Lord
Provost, fell into the trap nicely. when he stated
that:
II We are not all owi Dg the COIBJDUDi st Part y to
speak for the good citizens of Glasgow'. (51)
Whether Hood's analysis of the Trades Council
was accurate or not, it indicates that there was
some sort of struggl e for control over the
direction of the campaign against the sale of' the
Merryl ee houses at this stage. In any event the
deputation from the Trades Council was the only one

-209-
allowed to put it's case to the Corporation. (52) In
a meeting that lasted over f'ive hours, and was by
all accounts f'ull of' vehement discussions, one
Labour council I or, John Mains, was suspended f'or
protesting at the decision to vote on the sale of'
the Merryl ee houses. (53) For the proposal to sell
the houses 56 Progressives voted in f'avour and the
Labour votes were not counted as they carried on
the i 1" protest; a f'actor which was to be of' utmost
concern to Labour councillors in the f'urther
meetings of' the Corporation. In any case Glasgow
Corporation was now in f'avour of' selling the
Merrylee houses. One report in a prominent journal
summed up the situation cogently:
" ••• Now the action at' the Council seeas to have
set ot't' a spark. It may flicker out. It could quite
as easily hurst -into a t'1a.me."(54)
Within days of this decision being taken
worki ng cl ass organisations throughout Glasgow
stepped up the campaign against the proposed sal e.
Socialist organisations in Glasgow at this time had
a novel way of' advertising their meetings by
daubi ng the streets with chal k paint, and many of'
the streets were plastered with paint as public
meetings were organised throughout the city. It was
around this time that real divisions began to

-210-
appear between those who wanted to keep the protest
within the confines of representative democracy and
those who wanted to combine such action with more
direct forms of protest. These divisions became
apparent at a raIl y organised by the Labour Party
on the 12th of December. wi th over I, 500 peopl e
present. After pledging their support for
oppos i tion to the sal e of the Merryl ee houses the
Labour MPs present were challenged to support
demonstrations and strikes against the proposed
sal e. The MPs refused to back such a propos it ion,
but others present were not so reticent:
"We'll have our own delDOnstration now and we'll
succeed in blacking this Job at Merrylee . . . . . I
gl ve the assurance that i t will be over our dead
bodies that they build those houses at
Merrylee". (55)
The Labour Group on the Corporation also
expressed their opposition to such action and
stated that they were • perturbed by this reaction
by a militant Left-wing section amongst the
building tradesmen' . (56) A Labour Party
spokesperson went as far as to describe the
situation as being' quite dangerous', adding that.
• it may impede industrial recovery'. continuing,
'the Labour Group do not countenance any unofficial

-211-
and unconstitutional action on the industrial
side' . (57) Despite these warnings the planned
demonstration went ahead when the Housing Committee
met on the 20th December. Nevertheless, the
warnings had some effect with around 1,500 people
taking part in the demonstration, instead of the
10,000 which the organisers had hoped for. This did
not prevent them from gaining entrance to the City
Chambers where they were ignored by the Housing
Committee. The elected representatives had decided
that the decision about the sale of council houses
was to be conducted within the confines of
representative democracy, where the views of
working class organisations would only be heard
through Labour councillors. For their part, the
Labour councillors, while willing to listen to
deputations of groups opposed to the sal e, were
intent on retaining hegemonic control over the
campaign against the sale of the Merrylee houses.
The Labour Group on the Corporation, and possibl y
the Labour Party i tsel f, was more hopeful of
petitions and representations being made within
Gl asgow Corporation and to the Secretary of State
for Scotland than direct action and strikes to
prevent the sale going ahead. An almost identical
approach was adopted by the General Council of the
STUC. (58) The similarities with both organisations

-212-
present rejection of 'unl awful activity' in
opposition to the Poll Tax are obvious (see M.
Lavalette and G. Mooney, 1989).
Around this time a Joint Committee to Prevent
the Sal e of Merryl ee Houses, (convened under the
auspices of J. & G. Weir's Joint Shop Trades
Committee) was formed, in an attempt to combine all
the various organisations opposed to the move. The
futility of depending on the goodwill of government
ministers was borne out when this group sent a
del egation of around 100 members to ask the
Secretary of State for Scotland to overule the
Corporation's decision. The Secretary of State
ignored them and left i t to an official for housing
to speak to them. They were al so prevented from
marching through the streets of Edinburgh to
demonstrate their anger at the decision of Glasgow
Corporation to go ahead with the sale, and 'many
police were noticeable in the vicinity of the
deputation' . (59) The state's contempt for working
cl ass protest coul d not have been expressed more
clearly than this. Meanwhil e. the Labour Group
continued with their own protest within the
confines of the City Chambers. Their protests in
the closing week of 1951 were limited to procedural
WTanglings over the accuracy of council minutes

-213-
from previous meetings and accusations that the
Progressi ves were encouraging 'queue Jumping' by
their proposal to sell the Merrylee houses. It was
in this context that one Labour councillor
suggested that the Labour Party had never been
against the principle of owner-occupation, but that
under the existing deplorable housing conditions
they coul d not support the proposal to sell the
houses at Merrylee. (60) This attitude was no doubt
behind the later criticisms by the I.L.P. that the
Labour Party were merel y opposing the sal e of the
Merrylee houses on 'electioneering grounds'. (61)
In any event, the campaign against the sale
continued along the same lines into the new year of
1952, with the Labour group continuing to challenge
the accuracy of the minutes of previous Corporation
meetings. and threatening I egal action over the
issue. (62) However. the discussion about the
proposed sale was widened in early January when
separate delegations from the Scottish Trades Union
Congress (STUC) and Glasgow Labour MPs met with the
Secretary of State for Scotl and 'in pri vate'. One
other del egation representing 24- organisations in
GI asgow had to content themsel yes wi th a meet i ng
wi th the Under-Secretary of State. whi I e a group
representing Edinburgh's homel ess were refused a

-214--
hearing. The fact that Glasgow Corporation might be
allowed to continue with the sale of the Merrylee
houses was now being seen by groups in other areas
as a threat to the whole notion of state provided
hous i ng; and allover Scotl and a great wi despread
opposition and protest was mobilised. If the sale
of council housing was allowed to go ahead in
Glasgow i t was feared that other local authorities
woul d adopt simil ar strategies; two other council s
had already made proposals to build houses for sale
and nine others had made inquiries. (63) The two
, official' delegations of Labour MFs and STUC
representatives <,.rere given an 'assurance' by the
Secretary of State that onl y peopl e with urgent
housing need would be able to buy any council
houses that were sold. The MFs, for their part,
were "hopeful that reason woul d prevail". (64-) By
appeal ing to 'reason' it seems as if some of the
'leaders' of labour organisations in Glasgow <,.rere
unaware of the political and ideological distance
which had now been opened up between working people
who depended on council housing and those who were
responsible for providing them. Their 'hopes' <,.rere
not shared by the Progressive leaders of the
Corporation, whose leader had no desire to
compromise when he described the houses at Merrylee

-215-
as: "The most saleable little property I have
seen."(65)
Those who \\?ere opposed to the sal e \\?ere not
deterred by such pomposity. Within t\\?enty-f'our
hours of' this speech being made the Joint
Committee which had been f'ormed to prevent the sale
of' the Merrylee houses called on workers to strike
f'or half' a day and take part in a demonstration on
the 30th of' January, the day when the Hous i ng
Committee \\?ere due to meet. The organisers of' this
campaign held protest meetings throughout the city.
with mass meetings in public halls. outside
f'actories and Corporation building sites at
lunchtime. They \\?ere determined to gather the
support of' as many working class people and
organisations in Glasgow against the proposed sale
and \\?ere adamant that their agitation would
continue. The legal representati ves of' the state
had other ideas. Three days bef'ore the planned
demonstration was to take pI ace in George Square,
Glasgow magistrates invoked the Public Order Act
1936 on the procession. This was the f'irst time
this Act had been used in Glasgow, though meetings
had been banned in George Square since the 1908
unemployed demonstrations. (66).

-216-
The demonstration went ahead. and, despite the
f act that the magistrates had imposed a ban on
marches in George Square (the site of' the City
Chambers), nine deputations 'from among the 2,000
demonstrators marched into the main entrance o'f the
City Chambers. Again they were denied a hearing by
the Progressives on the Corporation, who were more
concerned with approving the conditions laid down
by the Secretary of State for the sal e of the
Merryl ee houses. The Secretary o'f State had now
disregarded all the protests and deputations that
had been made to him on behalf' o'f all those opposed
to the sale. He had now given his consent to the
proposal to sell the houses at Merrylee on
conditions which were virtually the same as those
I aid down by the Progressi ves. The houses were to
be sold to tenants of Corporation houses, persons
requiring accomodation f'or reasons of' ill-heal th
(for example, tuberculous patients), and persons
who were at the time on the waiting I ist 'for houses
and who would, according to Corporation letting
pol icy. be o'ffered a house within a year. The
Secretary of' State also included one additional,
and quite novel, stipulation that provision must be
made 'to ensure that the houses are not resold at a
profit by their purchasers.' (67) The period
specified under this clause was three years, and as

-217-
we now know it is simil ar to the 1980 'Right to
Buy' I egisl ation. So even this pol icy development
was to have 'unintended consequences' for future
generations of council tenants. The proposal to
sell the Merrylee houses under these conditions was
again carried by the Housing Committee by 19 votes
to 17. The conditions attached to the sal e were
also approved at a full meeting of the Corporation
on February the 22nd 1952.
By now there were over 1,000 applications
to buy the houses at Merryl ee (i ncl udi ng 90 f'rom
existing Corporation tenants>, with some 200
completing the application schedules drawn up by
the city f'actor's department. Perhaps as a resul t
of' this apparent success, the Progressives on the
Corporation began to increase their attacks on the
whole notion of state provided housing. Macpherson-
Rait was at the forefront of these attacks:
" •. in GI asgow 25 per cent of' the houses
aval iable to let were municipal houses and 75 per
cent were privately owned. The municipal houses
carried a Government subsidy. but since 194-5 that
had not met the gap between rent pI us subsidy and
the total cost. Between May 194-6 and May 1951,
£2,628.000 had been paid f'rom the rates. That meant
that 75 per cent of' the people- those living In

-218-
factor's houses- ~re subsidising those who had
corporation houses". (68 >
The ideology of' the 'oversubsidised' council
tenant was now being used with a vengance to
justif'y the sale of the Merrylee houses. The fact
that 31 of the 53 Labour council I ors, and 6 of'
Glasgow's Labour MFs, were Corporation tenants may
have been behind this scaremongering. To their
credit, some Labour councillors challenged the
importance attached to the finance of housing,
emphasising that social need was just as important.
The campaign against the sale continued. with
protest meetings throughout the city. opposition
from the STUC and Labour MFs. HO<Never, by the end
of April 1952, 8 of the houses at Merrylee had been
processed for sale and a further 96 appl ications
for purchase were being processed by the Town
CI erk. Of' these appl icants onl y 23 <Nere existing
Corporation tenants and 7 from the waiting list.
With an election now only weeks away the
campaign took an unusual twist. One prospective
Labour candidate for the municipal elections, a Mr
William Meikle <Parkhead Ward>, applied to buy one
of the houses at Merryl ee. His excuse was that he
made the application 'only for the purpose of'
establishing in my mind once and for all precisely

-219-
what it costs to get one.' (69) As the prices for
the Merrylee houses had already been decided by the
Corporation, and had been advertised in the Glasgow
press as early as November 1951, Glasgow City
Labour Party ref'used to accept this explanation
and, despite being supported by at least two
GI asgow Labour MPs, they expelled Meikle from the
party. The Merrylee issue was the most important
factor for all parties in the election, and this
was in no small part due to those i nvol ved in the
campaign group which had been set up to oppose the
sale. They continued the agitation right up to
polling day, daubing the streets with slogans and
were present outside most polling stations. (70). On
the day in whi ch the el ect i on was taki ng pI ace in
Glasgow, 7th May 1952, the Secretary of State for
Scotland, speaking in the House of Commons, was now
distancing himsel f' from the decision to sell the
houses at Merrylee. stating that:
.. __ he bad no po~rs to intervene 1 n regard to
the plans f'or the disposal of' houses at Merrylee
Road, GI asgow.. _ . the houses are not all compl eted
yet and are watching this aatter very
caref'ull y". (71)
For someone who had taken such an interest in
what was happening in Glasgow at this time, and

-220-
whose consent was required for the sale to go
ahead, this was a real reversal in attitude. The
reason for this was not long in coming. On the same
day that the Secretary of State was making his
statement in London, Labour were returned to power
in Glasgow with a majority of 15, overturning the
previous Progressive majority of 5. The Labour
leader's first statement on the election was on the
issue of the Merrylee houses:
"We will take the earl lest opportunity of
making all the Merrylee houses which have not been
sold available to those In want". (72)
On the 29th of May 1952 the plan to sell the
houses at Merrylee was Feversed by the newly
elected Labour council. The main election issue was
the Merrylee houses and the Labour party was
forced, by the sheer strength of the campaign
against the sale of these houses, to give a
commitment to reverse the Progressives origi nal
proposal. It was on the basis of making the
Merryl ee houses avail abl e for I etti ng rather than
for sale that Labour were elected in early May.
They had no option but to carry this pledge out and
the Merrylee houses were allocated under the
existing Corporation procedures. (73) There is no
doubt that, for the many worki ng cl ass and

-221-
socialist organisations involved in the campaign
against the sale of the Merrylee houses, this was a
victorious outcome to a campaign that had involved
the mobilisation of thousands of Glaswegians and
had long-t.erm impl ications for housing pol icy in
the ci ty. It woul d be some years before such a
serious proposal to sell off council houses was
heard in GI a.sgow aga.i n.
2.5 Conclusion
What has been emphasised in the preceding
discussion is that, the collective demands of the
working class at an apparently 'locality' level
have been more decisive in the development of
housi ng pol icy than has been acknowl edged to date.
The provision of council housing, in GI asgow at
I east, did not. represent an inevitable and
.progressive step in pol icy making. The squatters'
and the Merrylee campaigns had a major and
determining infl uence on t.he provision of council
housing in the post-war years.
During the period under discussion, class
int.erests and class relations remained crucial in
structuring and determining struggles organised
around other int.erest.s in civil society and in
pol i t lcal formation: namely struggles over the
provision of local authorit.y housing to let. What

-222-
this suggests is that, alongside struggles over
production (I.e. in f'actories>, the struggle over
the reproduct i on of' I abour power was regarded as
significant by many sections of' the working class,
in Glasgow at least, during the immediate post-war
years. Theref'ore, contrary to Butt's suggestion,
action around housing issues during these years did
not lead to the adoption of a 'paler shade of' Red
Clydeside'.(74-) While there may not have been a
'revolutionary moment' in Glasgow in the 194-0s and
1950s, the campaIgn over housing condItions
remained at the top of' the polItIcal agenda,
especially f'or working class GlaswegIans.
Nevertheless, It is essential to acknowledge
that collective action around housing issues are
not simple automatic responses to negative
situations. This type of' action is creative and
purposIve, arises out of' a series of' complex socIal
and political conditions withIn a given 'localIty'.
From the analysis contained in the preceeding
dicussion of' events in Glasgow in the early 1950s,
it seems that at least fIve conditions are
necessary for the development of' the kind of
collective identity and organisation we have in
mind here:
-223-
1) The existence of a large number of people in
the same situation;
2) Geographical concentration;
3) Identifiable targets of opposition;
4) Sudden events or changes in social position;
5) A politically experienced leadership which
can articulate readily understood goals.
All o~ these elements, in one form or another,
were present in both the squatters' movement and
the campaign against the sale of the Merrylee
houses. There was a large percentage of the
popul ation living in appall ing housi ng conditions
within the city of Glasgow. Both the squatters and
the Merrylee campaigners had an easily recognisable
opponent in Glasgow Corporation, the body with the
responsibil ity o~ providing them with houses. In
the case of the squatters the events of the war
years had exacerbated the housing situation in
Glasgow and. there~ore, altered the whole position
regarding the allocation of houses. The Merryl ee
campaign began. as we have seen, as a resul t of a
proposed change in the way that the houses were to
be allocated. Agai n, both the squat t i ng movement
and the Merrylee campaign were led by 'organic
intellectuals' of the working class, mainly members

-224--
of the Conununist Party. The process by which they
were abl e to gain substantial support for these
campaigns was I argel y dependent on the fact that
many working men and women in Glasgow had a
'vision' of municipal housing as a basic human and
political right which the Conununist Party was able
to tap into. The irony is that this vision had been
created in the inter-war years by the I.L.P .• who
had then been dubbed as 'social facists' led astray
by 'reformist illusions' by the sectarian Conununist
Party. The remainder of this concl usion will
attempt to indicate briefly the significance of the
events under discussion in this paper.
By taking direct forms of action to provide a
shelter for their families, squatters were
chall engi ng the 'rules' relating to the allocation
of property. The historical context of the
squatters' movement should not be ignored. The
state had already shown, during the war years, that
it was capable of overriding private property
interests for the public good, by requisitioning
property. The demands of the squatters in the
immediate post-war years was for similar action to
be taken on behalf of the homeless, in a peacetime
situation. These demands were initially ignored by
the state and it was only through direct action

-225-
that the government rinally gave in to the demands
of the squatters and allowed them to occupy the
Nissen huts on the Army camps, under the management
of local authorities. This form of squatting was
popul ar but, when it extended to pri vate property
through the urgings of the Communist Party the
state could not be seen to stand idly by. Through a
combination or propaganda and criminal prosecutions
the state astutely prevented this form of squatting
from spreading. Support for the squatters seemed to
fall away at this point and those who occupied the
Army camps, which were in inconspicuous locations
away from city centres, were allowed to remain in
peaceful, but not always pleasant, surroundings. In
some respects, therefore, whil e there was popul ar
support for the squatters the attempts to widen and
strengthen the politicisation or squatting were
unsuccessful. While some workers, notably the
miners in Lanarkshire, showed support for those who
were homeless or living in overcrowded accomodation
the trade union movement and wider I abour movement
failed to fully mobilise their sympathy ror the
squatters' into any kind of errective industrial
action which would have backed the squatters
demands. Despite these negative elements the
squatting movement or 1946, in Glasgow and beyond,
continually· appl led the necessary pressure on the

-226-
state to provide housing for the working cl asses.
Their highly publ icised and highly successful
activities ensured that the government would have
to respond in some way to the appall i ng hous i ng
conditions in British towns and cities in the post-
war years.
The campaign against the sale of council houses
at Merrylee was a far more significant event in
many ways. This was the first time that a local
authority in Britain made a serious attempt to sell
off a whole estate of houses which were originally
intended for letting as council houses. This
chall enge to the prov i s i on of counc i I hous i ng was
met with a 'spontaneous' response from a wide range
of working cl ass and social ist organisations in
Gl asgow. The ideology behi nd the proposal to sell
these houses was apparent from the beginning- 'good
quality housing is not for letting to working class
tenants'. The 'organic intellectuals' of the
worki ng cl ass in Glasgow, to follow Gramsci t
recognised this ideology for what it was and
responded with a massive fightback which was part
of "the struggl e for hegemony" . They recognised
that the practical outcome of such a pol icy would
have drastic consequences for the provision of
housing in the city and through such an

-227-
understanding, were able to mobil ise thousands of'
working cl ass GI aswegians behind the campaign to
pre vent the sal e go i ng ahead. As we have seen,
there were some leading f'igures in the labour
movement in Glasgow who objected to their tactics
of demonstrations and strikes to prevent the sale
and attempted to keep the opposition to the
proposal within more' legitimate' forms of' protest.
This ' ideology of Labourism' has a long historical
tradition within working class politics and it is
really not that surprising that it should have
surfaced in this context (see D. Rubenstein, 1979;
and R. Miliband. 1973). It might he suggested that
in the dispute over the sale of' the Merrylee houses
that this ideology proved to be more successf'ul. as
it was only when the Labour Party were returned to
power that the proposal to sell the houses was
reversed. This would be a misinterpretation and
distortion of these events. It was through the
campaign organised by building workers, tenants'
associations, women's groups and other working
class organisations in Glasgow that the real
opposition to the sale of the Merrylee houses was
mobil ised. Without their 'spontaneous' action the
campaign against the sale and the alternative case
f'or council housing would not have rec~~ved the
widespread publicity and support that became

-228-
essential to the success of the oppos it ion.
Therefore, while Castells may be correct in
suggesting that cities are • I iving systems, made,
transformed and experienced by people' (75), the
important point to emphasise is that these events
are not to be anal ysed in the context of I urban
soc ial movements' but, rather, as part of the
overall struggle of the working class for better,
cheaper housing. The squatters' movement and the
Merrylee campaign were, quite simply, part of the
Glasgow working class counter-hegemonic struggle
for good council housing for workers at rents they
coul d aff ord.
**************************
-229-
CHAPTER TWO
NOTES
1. A. Melucci (1989). p12.
2. M. Foot (1975). p59. Foot provides an
interesting account of disputes on housing pol icy
wi thi n the Cabi net and between Bevan and the Tory
oppos i t ion.
3. P. Addison (1985). pil.
4. Anuerin Bevan, in House of Commons debates 1945-
46 Vol 414; Col 1222.
5. Anuerin Bevan. in House of Commons debates 1945-
46, Vol 414 Col 1224.
6. In Gl asgow, the proposals contained in the
governments • Housing Programme for 1947 only
allowed for 3,644 houses to be completed in that
year. Given the conditions that prevailed at the
time this was grossly inadequate. In actual fact,
only 2,944 municipal houses were built in that
year, 1,438 of these being temporary houses. (see
Corporation of the City of Glasgow Housing
Committee. 1966. p45). Figures for house building
for the period after 1947 were as follows: 1949-
217,240, 1950- 210,253. 1951- 204,117. (Source: A.
Sked and C. Cook (1979>. p47.

-230-
7. Anuerin Bevan. Hansard 1948-49, Vol 468. Co1186.
8. Harold Macmillan, Hansard 1951. Vo1494. Col's
2227-2354.
9. See Harry McShane GI asgow Wants- Houses In A
Hurry. (Undated, circa 1945/6) p4. Pamphlet
published by the Scottish Committee of the
Communist Party of Great Britain. My thanks are due
to Audrey Canning of the Scottish Gallacher
Memorial Library for providing me with this and
other references. The figures for GI asgow' s
population at this time are derived from the
Corporation of GI asgow, Facts and Figures. 1974.
Held in the Glasgow Room of the Mitchell library.
10. Quoted in Harry Mcshane ibid p2.
11. J. Cunni son and J. B. S. Gil fill an [Ed' s1 (1958).
'Made-Down' is a term that was used to refer to the
subdivision of houses for the unskilled poor, often
in former middle class areas of the city. For a
discussion of this see- S. Damer (1990). pp72-73.
12. Glasgow Herald 16-9-46.
13. Councillor James McInnes, Sub-Convener of
Housing Committee. (Undated, circa 1946) 'Glasgow's
Housing Progress', p17. Pamphl et pub I i shed by
Glasgow Trades Council, City Labour Party and
Glasgow & District Co-operative Conference

-231-
Association. This pamphlet was written as a direct
response to the criticisms made by the Communist
Party, and particularly Harry McShane. See S. Damer
(1990) pp170-71 ~or a discussion o~ corruption and
council house allocations in Glasgow.
14. Taped interview with Ms R. 18-9-90.
15. Harry McShane (Undated, circa 1947) Glasgow's
Housing Disgrace! .. An Exposure and the Way Out.
Pamphlet published by the Glasgow City Committee o~
the Communist Party. p3. Again, thanks to Audrey
Canning.
16. Bob Saunders. (1974). p26.
17. Conservative M.P., Quintin Hogg, Parliamentary
Proceedings Vol 386, Col 1918; 194-4-.
18. P. Addison (1985), gives some account o~ the
extent o~ squatting in Britain in this period. The
actual term 'squatter' was reI ati vel y unknown at
this Juncture. Another use~ul book. which includes
a chapter on the Post-War Squatters by Andrew
Friend, is N. Anning et al (1980).
19. Mr Michael Ward. Quoted in Glasgow Herald 23-8-
4-6.
20. Quoted in Bob Saunders, ibid p27.
21. See Linda Mackenney [Ed] (1985>' One o~ the
origi nal cast o~ Glasgow Unity Theatre has

-232-
indicated to me that some of those who appeared in
the original production of The Gorbal s Story were
in their late teens or early twenties, with a sole
interest in the theatre. However, by taking part in
the pI ay they all became more aware of housing
conditions in Glasgow and were politicised as a
result. <personal communication with Alrea Edwards,
now with Clyde Unity Theatre, 16-5-90}. The older
members of the cast probably played a part in this
politicisation, as they had been political
activists from the days of the 1930s workers
theatre. While Peter Mcintyre was one of the
• leaders' of the squatters' movement he was not
actually squatting himself.
22. The Economist 24-8-46. The press in Glasgow
were not as vociferous in their support of
squatting. as expressed in The Bulletin editorial
of 17-9-46: ..... If' not checked it could produce
only chaos. the sort of complete disorder in which
any particular want ~uld be simply regarded as the
right to take".
24. Glasgow Herald, 20-9-46.
25. Peter McIntyre, quoted in Glasgow Herald 18-9-
46.
-233-
26. George Buchanan, quoted in Glasgow Herald 16-9-
46.
27. Peter McIntyre, quoted in Glasgow Herald 16-9-
4-6.
28. P. Cal vocoressi. <1978>' p134-.
29. A. Bevan, quoted in M. Foot (1975). p81.
30. Harry Pollitt, general secretary of the
Communist Party. speaking at a pub I ic meeting in
support of the squatters in London on the 12th of
September 1946. Quoted in The Bulletin 13-9-46.
While speaking in support of the squatters Pollitt
referred to the fact that the Labour government had
been abl e to prov ide houses for the 40,000 Pol es
who he suggested 'ought to be back in their own
country' . Quoted in John Mahon. (1976 ) Harry
Pollitt: A Biography. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
p320. So, despite his attempts to sound progressive
in relation to the squatters, Pollitt was
inacapable of realising the racism inherent in this
anal ysis.
31. See Peter Dickens 'Squatting and the State' in
New Society 5-5-77. pp219-221.
32. J. R. Short. (1982). p42.
33. Neil McCall um. 'In Transit' I in the New
Statesman & Nation, March 1st 1952. One person who

-234--
was brought up in a squatters' camp in Glasgow from
1946 to the mid-1950s has outl ined the problems
that she and her famil y suffered as a consequence
of the stigma attached to squatters, and the
treatment they were subjected to by different
sections of the local state. This woman did not
leave the squatters' camp until she was twelve
years 01 d and has suffered Ii fel ong psychological
consequences as a resul t of her experi ences. When
referring to her childhood she often hid the fact
that she lived in a squatters' camp. preferring to
tell peopl e that she was brought up in Castl emil k,
the scheme she moved to as a child. (taped
interview with Mrs M. 28-8-90).
34-. Housing organisations and tenants' associations
campaigned against cuts in the bu i 1 di ng programme
throughout 1947. On one occasion they held a
meeting in Gl asgow with over 150 del egates from
different parts of Scotl and representing over 4-0
organisations with a total membership of around
14-,000. See Glasgow Herald 8-12-4-7.
35. This was the headl ine of a Housing Department
Publication during these years. See Housing News in
Glasgow Room of Mitchell Library VI-7 14-6-54-.
36. C. Brogan. (1952) . p216. Brogan was the doyen
of right wing pol emicists in the 1 ate 194-0s and

-235-
early 1950s. Among other things, he publ ished a
derisory account of the leading figures in the 1945
Labour government- Our New Masters. London: Hollis
and Carter 1948. He also managed to write one of
the worst books ever published about Glasgow.
37. Progressive was the somewhat ironical and
paradoxical title chosen by the Conservative Party
in Glasgow at this time. The Moderate Party, which
was founded in 1920, began referring to themselves
as Progressives in the late 1920s and when the
party was re-organised in 1936 it became known as
the Progressi ve Party. The Moderate Party i tsel f
had grown out of' a loose anti-Socialist alliance
called the Citizen's Union which was f'ounded in
1898. The Moderate Party had set itself the task of
rallying Liberals and Unionists against 'extremist
candidates'. The main information in this section
was derived from two publications- Fred Douglas
(circa 1944) ; and H. J. Hanham (1969) . p195.
Unfortunately. the Conservative Party in Scotland
do not have the records for this period and I was
unable to trace either the origin of this title or
debates within the Conservative Party on the sale
of council houses. The Labour Party in Scotland do
not have archive material for this period either.
Personal communications.
-236-
38. A. Macpherson-Rait, quoted in Glasgow Herald 6-
9-51. Macpherson-Rait had became a councillor in
1937. He served as a staff captain in the first
word war, in which he earned a mil itary M. B. E. He
started a career as an architect-surveyor, before
starting up his own company manufacturing fashion
garments. He owned a fashion shop in Hope Street
Glasgow, which closed down in the late-1980s. See
Glasg'ow Scrapbooks Vo18, pI, in the Glasgow Room,
Mitchell library.
39. London Times 29-11-51.
41. Councillor James R. Duncan <Labour Housing
Convener), quoted in the Gl asgow Heral d 30-5-52.
The other 'high-amenity' scheme built in the post-
war years was Auldhouse.
42. Forward 8-12-51.
43. John Lawrence, possibly the main Private
builder in Glasgow at the time, quoted in The
Bulletin and Scots Pictorial 7-9-51.[hereafter The
Bulletin.]. Andrew Mickle, president of the
Scottish House Builders Association, while
supporting the move by Glasgow Corporation summed
up the fears of pri vate buil ders when he stated
that; "we don't want them competing with us

-237-
i ndef ini tel y ... ibid. The Bulletin itself was in
favour of the Corporation selling older council
houses, but argued that local authorities should
not take on the role of building new houses for
sale. Mickle's partner in the building firm he
owned in Glasgow was John McTaggart, who was a
former member of the ILP.
44. Mr Edward Donaldson, then a shop steward on the
Cranhill site quoted in the Glasgow Herald 4-12-51.
Along with his col I eague- and fellow Merrylee
campaigner- Les Forster, Ned Donaldson is writing a
book on the Merryl ee campaign to be publ ished by
Clydeside Press in the near future.
45. The Bulletin, 4-12-51.
46. Taped interview with Ms R. 18-9-90.
47. The Bulletin, 7-12-51.
48. Poem by R. Fraser <circa 1951-52), in The
Housing Swindle. Pamphlet produced by Glasgow
Communist Party.
49. The Glasgow Herald, 7-12-51. This report
conflicts slightly with an account given by one of
the demonstrators who was at the front of the
march. Ned Donal dson has suggested that a young
pol ice officer attempted to hit him on the head
with a baton which was knocked out of his hand by

-238-
the sergeant at his side. The sergeant scolded the
younger officer and told him he could start a riot
if he had made contact. <Ned Donaldson, speaking at
a public meeting on housing in the People's Palace
27-5-90> .
50. London Times, 7-12-51. Ned Donaldson claims
that a number of the women gained entry to the
meeting of the Corporation, and one of them
produced a rat to the counc ill ors present as an
indication of the appalling conditions that people
were living in.
51. Councillor Andrew Hood, quoted in Glasgow
Herald 7-12-52. The Trades Council was officially
suspended at this time by the Scottish T. U. C. and
no records of their minutes exist for this period.
Glasgow Trades Council was eventually dissafiliated
from the STUC, over a dispute about a motion at the
1951 Congress on the Labour governement's peace
proposal s. The di spute was bas i call y between some
Communist Party members, who favoured the Five-
Power Pact and those who wished to defend Labour's
position on rearmament. (see Angela Tuckett. (1986)
The Scottish Trades Union Congress: The First 80
Years 1897-1977. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing
and STUC. pp334.-339. AI so STUC Congress Bull et i n,
February 1952).
-239-
53. Minutes of the Corporation of Gl asgow, 6th
December 1951, p1284.
54. New Statesman & Nation, December 15th 1951.
55. Les Forster, building trade shop-steward on the
Cranhill site, quoted in The Bulletin 13-12-51, and
The Glasgow Herald 13-12-51.
57. The Bulletin 14-12-51. The editor of the
Bulletin was obviously perturbed by this situation
and suggested a remedy to his/her readers
accordingly: - •.• i t calls for a firm warning to
trade unionists that democratic :freedom has its
responsibil ities in the way o:f conformity to the
rules. And i t should be accompanied by an equally
firm warning :from the trade union leaders that any
"militancy·' or strike will involve the penalties of
unof:ficial action".
58. The STUC's position was identical to Glasgow s
Labour council I or's and led to a dispute at the
1952 Congress in Perth where one del gate, William
Towell, (an acti ve trade unionist, Communist and
tenants' representative) challenged the leadership
of the STUC to take more mil i tant action on the
Merryl ee issue. See Fi fty-Fi fth Annual Report of
the STUC. pp220-221. In Gallacher Memorial Library.

-240-
60. Labour counc ill or T. G. McLure. quoted in the
Glasgow Herald 21-12-51.
61. Mr David Gibson speaking at the annual
conference of the Scottish Independent Labour
Party, quoted in the Glasgow Herald 11-2-52. Gibson
al so suggested that part of the reason for the
Progressives proposal to sell the houses at
Merrylee arose from the fact that the words
'working class' had been eliminated from the powers
given to local authorities to build houses by an
Act pased by a Labour government. [He was referring
to the 1949 Housing Act].
62. Andrew Hood, leader of the Labour group, quoted
in The Bulletin 11-1-52.
63. T. D. Gal brai th, Under-Secretary of' State for
Scotland, speaking in the House of Commons on 5th
of February 1952 suggested that the local
authorities in Prestwick and Cambeltown had put
forward proposals to sell some of' their new houses,
and nine others had made inqu i r ies. See The
Bulletin 6-2-52. Opposition to the proposed sale
was al so expressed at this time by the Executi ve
Council of the Union of Shop Distributive and
All ied Workers at a month! y meet i ng in London on
the 13-1-52. See the Glasgow Herald 14-1-52. There

-241-
were protest movements of workers and homeless
families against the sale of the Merrylee houses in
Edinburgh. Vale of Leven and in many other parts of
Scotl and.
64. J olm M' Goveran. Labour MP for Shettleston,
quoted in the Glasgow Herald 3-1-52.
65. Councillor A. Macpherson-Rait, speaking at the
annual dinner of the GI asgow and West of Scotl and
PI umbers' and Domestic Engineers' <Employers>
Association on 11-1-52. Quoted in the Glasgow
Heral d 12-1-52.
66. The Public Order Act 1936 was: "born out o-C the
-Cascist marches o-C the 1930s, prohibited quasi-
military organisations and the wearing o-C uni-Coras
-Cor political objects. It developed pol ice powers
to keep the peace at processions by providing -Cor
the imposition o-C conditions, usually rerouting.
where serious public disorder was apprehended, and,
in except lonal circumstances, -Cor banning
processions altogether". [ Peter Thornton. <1987 )
Public Order Law. London: Financial Trading
Publications Ltd. pl.].
67. These conditions are set out in a letter from
the Secretary of State dated 28th January 1952. See

-242-
minutes of the Corporation of Glasgow 30th January
1952. p1578. In S.R.A.: Cl/3/124A.
68. Councillor A. Macpherson-Rait speaking at the
meeting of Glasgow Corporation on the 21st February
1952. Quoted in the Glasgow Herald 22-2-52.
69. The Bulletin 2-5-52.
70. Evidence for this is apparent in a film called
Let Glasgow Flourish. produced at the time by
people involved in the campaign against the sale of
Merryl ee houses, and avail abl e from the Scottish
Film Archive. Thanks to Janet McBain for providing
me with this film. The film was made by members of
the Dawn Cine Group as part of their attempts to
revive the \\7Orkers cinema of the 1930s. Thanks to
Douglas Allen for this information and other
comments on this chapter.
71. Mr James Stuart, Secretary of State for
Scotland. speaking in the House of Commons 6th May
1952. Quoted in the Glasgow Herald 7-5-52.
72. Andrew Hood, I eader of the Labour group on
Glasgow Corporation, quoted in The Bulletin 7-5-52.
73. Most of the Corporation's output of housing at
this time comprised of tenements (95%). Merryl ee,
however, was a 'high-amenity' scheme and few of the

-243-
houses were let to Roman Catholics. See M. Horsey.
( 1990 ). pp35-36.
74. See J. Butt (1978). p165.
75. Manuel Castells, (1983).

-244-
CHAPTER TWO- APPENDIX
Some o£ the OrKanisations Involved In Merrylee
Campaign:
1. Amalgamated Engineering Union, Milton Branch.
2. Amalgamated Engineering Union,G. & J. Weir, Ltd,
Joint Trades Committee.
3. Amalgamated Engineering Union (Jas Howden &

Coy's Joint Shop Stewards' Committee).
4. Amalgamated Union o£ Building Trade Workers of
Great Britain and Ireland (Glasgow No 1 Branch).
5. Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers <Glasgow 2nd
Branch) .
6. Anderston (12th) Municipal Ward Committtee.
7. British Railways, St Rollox Works Committee.
8. Bridgeton Housing Association.
9. Cranhill Shop Stewards' Committee.
10. Cowl airs Co-operative Society.
11. Dennistoun Ward Labour Association.
12. Electrical Trades Union (Glasgow West Branch).
13. Electrical Trades Union <Blythswood Branch).

-245-
14-. Glasgow Labour Women's Housing Advisory
Council.
15. Glasgow Trades Council.
16. Glasgow City Committee of the Communist Party.
17. Glasgow and District Co-operative Association.
18. Glasgow City Labour Party.
19. Glasgow Central Constituency Labour Party.
20. Govan Constituency Labour Party.
21. Gorbals and Hutchesontown Housing Association.
22. Harland and Wolff Shop Stewards' Committee.
23. Hydepark Shop Stewards' Movement.
24-. Independent Labour Party <Glasgow Federation>.
25. Joint Committee to Prevent Sale of Merrylee
Houses.
26. Kelvingrove Labour Party.
27. National Union of Railwaymen <Glasgow No 12
Branch).
28. National Union of Railwaymen <Glasgow No 18
Branch) .
29. National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
30. National Federation of Bull ding Trade
Operatives <Glasgow Branch).

-246-
31. National Amalgamated Union of Life Assurance
Workers (Gl asgow Branch>.
32. Partick Tenants' Association.
33. Plumbing Department of Yarrows, Scotstoun.
34. Springburn Constituency Labour Party.
35. Shettleston Ward Labour Association.
36. Scottish Trade Union Congress, General Council.
37. Shop Stewards' Committee, Messrs All ey &
Maclennan.
38. Shop Stewards' Committee, Messrs Mirlees Watson
& Co, Scotland Street.
39. Shop Stewards' Committee, D.& W. Henderson Ltd.
40. Shop Stewards' Committee. Messrs G. & J. Weir
Ltd.
41. Shop Stewards' Committee. Shieldhall Building
Workers.
42. Shop Stewards' Committee, Toryglen Building
Workers.
43. Shop Stewards' Committee S.C.W.S. Shieldhall
44. Tradeston Constituency Labour Party.
45. Transport and General Workers Union (GI asgow
District Committee).
-247-
46. Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers
<Parkhead Branch>.
47. United Pattern Makers Association, <Glasgow No
1 Branch>.
Source: Corporation of Glasgow, Minutes of Housing
Coromi ttee from 3rd October 1951 to 21st February
1952.
-248-
CHAPTER THREE
THE ARDEN AND ALL-SCOTLAND RENT-INCREASE STRIKE OF
1958-59
3.1 Introduction
Agitation and protests on the rents issue havc
always figured highly in the history of tenants'
organisations and housing strugglcs. Thc
significance of worki ng cl ass involvement in this
form of direct action, despite the fact that they
have often been localised struggles. is apparent in
the striking material gains which have often
accrued from particular instances of rent strikes.
The most notable example is government intervention
to control rents in response to the GI asgow Rent
Strike of 1915. Several important reasons for
studying rent strikes in a sociological context
have already been outlined by Moorhouse et al:
" .. they ill ustrate cl earl y the creative aspect
or ~rking class lire . . . rent strikes can provoke a
direct physical challenge to the upholders ot'
existing social arrangements •.. such physical
challenges arise rrom the normative challenge to
the status quo which is al ways impl ici t and lDOre or
less expl icit in rent strikes •.. Incipient within
such action is an oppositional statement about
social relations in British society: about the

-249-
nature of property o~ership and about control over
JBen's I ives. I I (1)
With the important addition or control over
women's lives. without whose involvement most rent
strikes would never have been organised. this idea
Or a counter-hegemonic struggl e around issues or
social reproduction is crucial to an understanding
of the background to rent strikes. This chapter
will attempt to illustrate the centrality Or these
issues through a discussion or a rent-increase
strike which began in the Arden housing scheme on
the south-west periphery or Glasgow in 1958, and
which spread to other areas or Scotl and as the
campaign developed. The second section will provide
a brief history or rent strikes to emphasize the
ract that. whil e they remain a much understudied
phenomenon. they, have been a persistent part of
tenants l struggles for at least the last one-hundred
years. This will be rollowed by an outline of the
wider issues precipitating the Arden All-Scotland
rent strike, incl uding the state's attempt to de-
control rents in the post-war years. There will
then be a discussion of the Arden rent strike
proper. and a concluding analysis of the
relationship between this campaign and the post-war
tenants' movement in Glasgow.

-250-
3.2 Rent Strikes in History
David Englander, in his seminal account of the
relationship between landlord and tenant in urban
Britain, has traced the growth of tenants'
challenges to rent determination from the late
nineteenth-century to the period of the first
worl d-War. (2) Engl ander argues that whil e there is
occas$ional evidence of rent strikes in the earlier
part of the nineteenth century, I ike the one
organised by hand-loom weavers in Bol ton in 1826,
it was not until the late 1880s with the rapid
growth in property owners' associations that the
struggl e between I andl ord and tenant i ntens if i ed.
It is in this context that Englander refers to the
• endemic strife between landlord and tenant in
GI asgow' (D. Engl ander. 1983). He further argues,
however. that the 1915 Rent Restriction Act was the
"inevitable" outcome of a prolonged period of
struggle between landlord and tenant, without fully
explaining why i t was inevitable nor why the state
intervened in 1915. Other commentators have
chall enged this incremental ist version of events
and have specifically emphasised the central role
played by the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike in
detonating state intervention in rent control and
housing policy during this period:

-251-
..... The state was coapelled t;o produce t;he 1919
HousIng and Town PI anning Act; out; of' t;hin air. as
It; had absolut;ely no ltiOrked out; pol icy for the
systematic provision of ""<)rking class
housing. . . • WOrking-class demands had been
articulated to a level where the state had to
intervene to accomodate them. It is my contention
that without the 1915 Rent Strike in Glasgow, there
would have been no 1915 Rents and Mortgage
Restrictions Act. and without the 1915 Act there
would have been no 1919 Housing and Town Planning
Act in the -rorm in which we know i t. . . I •• (3)
[original emphasis].
Darner's cl ass anal ysis has the advantage of
locating the 1915 Rent Strike within a wider
political and economic context. in addition to
providing an interesting. account of the very real
contributions of tenants' organisations and women
in the overall struggle for the amelioration of the
living conditions of the working class. The first
Rent Restriction Act established two fundamental
principles of rent legislation. First, i t prevented
landlords raising rents above the rent being paid
f or a dwell i ng at the outbre ak of war in August
1914, and secondly i t prevented landlords evicting
tenants except in the relatively rare cases it

-252-
specified. It gave an new degree of protection to
tenants.
These themes were continued by Darner in his
examination of the Clydebank Rent Strike of the
1920s (S. Darner. 1985). In this analysis the events
in Clydebank are directly related to the fact that
the 1915 Rent and Mortgage Interest Act, which
froze the rents of small houses (poor people's
houses) at pre-war levels. was intended to be a
temporary measure. The confusion which arose in
this situation led the Government to appoint two
consecutive committees to investigate the affair:
the Hunter Committee of 1918 and the Salisbury
Committee of 1920. The report of the Hunter
committee resul ted in the passing of the Increase
of Rent and Mortgage (Restrictions) Act, 1919,
which doubled the rental limits of ·the Act of 1915.
A similar Act was passed in 1920 as a result of the
deliberations of the Salisbury Committee. The
Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest
(Restrictions) Act, 1920 trebled the rental 1 irnits
of the 1915 Act. Darner details the widespread
principled opposition to these Acts and explains
how the rent strike progressed in Clydebank both in
the courts and through civil disobedience against
evictions. The rent strike began in 1920 and

-253-
continued through to 1927, with large numbers of'
Clydebank tenants paying only "standard" rent. that
is, at the wartime level. Damer argues that the
rent strike was successf'ul on three levels:
II
(a) iDDDediate empirical gains for the
Clydebank tenants; (b) iJlllDediate and longer term
political gains in terms of Parliamentry
representation for themselves and the Scottish
working class; and (c) longer run eff'ects on the
whole issue of the politics of' social reproduction
of' the working class in housinK'. (4)
Darner's contention is that the CI ydebank
tenants successfully defended their standard of'
1 iving during a period of' mass unemployment and
def'eat for the worki ng cl ass; formed a base f'rom
which the Cl ydeside ILP members were abl e to be
el ected to ParI iament; and prevented the re'moval of'
rent control in the 1920s by organising the Rent
Strike.
Further Rent Acts were passed in the 1920s and
1930s, each going as far in decontrol as the
relation of' class and political struggle would
allow, and there is some evidence that rent strikes
continued to form an important part of working
class protest throughout the inter-war period <H.F.
Moor,house et aI, 1972). For instance. during the

-254--
rent strikes in Stepney and Bethnal Green in London
just prior to the second world war, there were
'pitched battles with bailiffs and police with
barbed wire barricades and pickets on duty day and
night' (P. Piratin, 1978). This rent strike ensured
that the state's aim to abolish rent control had to
be abandoned until after the war. Indeed the
Chamberlain government immediately introduced a new
Rent Restriction Act in 1939, which brought almost
all private landlord tenancies under control:
..... The Act stopped all f'orms of' decontrol and
provided the continuance of' the Rent Acts until six
months af'ter the date declared by Order in Council
to be the end of' the .. emergency". (5)
This situation continued until the Conservative
governments of the 1950s proclaimed their intention
of freeing property owners from rent control. As
the proceeding discussion will illustrate, it was
against this background that the Arden-All Scotland
Rent Strike of 1958 began.
The period after the second world war has also
witnessed a variety of rent strikes in working
cl ass areas of Britain. In 1960 there was a rent
strike involving over 8,000 tenants protesting
against a differential rent scheme introduced by
the local Conservat.i ve council in t.hc London

-255-
borough of St Pancras (D. Burn. 1972). In Sheffield
in 1967 tenants' associations organised rent
strikes against the adoption of a rebated rent
scheme by the local Labour council (P. A. Baldock.
1971; and S. Lowe, 1986). Between 1968 and 1970
there was a massive rent strike in the East End of
London against the Conservat i ve-controll ed Greater
London Council's proposal s to introduce a • fair
rents' system for council housing (H.F. Moorehouse
et al. 1972). In 1971 rent strikes were organised
in Derry and West Belfast against the introduction
of internment without trial in Northern Ireland (E.
McAnn. 1992). There is documentary evidence from
over eighty individual local authorities of rent
strikes by council tenants against the 1972 Housing
Finance Act (L. Sklair. 1975). The final wave of
rent strikes took place in the early 1980s against
the forced increases in rents by a number of local
authorities in response to financial cut-backs by
central government. (6) While these examples are
obviously related to different issues they
indicate, by their very diversity. the significance
of such a form of protest in the history of working
class politics in this country. It is obvious from
a reading of the various accounts of these rent
strikes that they were not all successful in
achieving the objectives which they had set

-256-
themsel ves. However, this does not mean that we
should diminish the importance of' such issues as
certain interpretations attempt to do:
..... there are no examples in the JlK)dern period,
or even the era of councIl house tenants"
movements, that rent strikes caused anything other
than a local ised impact .•. Most of the evidence
indicates that the rent strike as a political
tactic is extremely difficult to enforce and
frequently ends in disarray and confusion". (7)
The confusion is more apparent in the
interpretation provided by Lowe than in the history
of state rent control and tenants struggl es. The
rent strikes of the inter-war period ensured that
the state's proclaimed intention of' , f'reeing'
property owners from rent control was not to be
achieved on any signif'icant sc.ale. It was not until
the passing of' the 1957 Rent Act, which
decontrolled 800,000 tenants immediatel y and
provided that other properties would be
decontrolled automatically when there was a change
of tenant (known as "creeping decontrol") that this
policy progressed with any degree of' success. It is
the background to this specific piece of
legislation which was responsible for the rent
strike in Glasgow in 1958 and the 'localised

-257-
impact' was regarded as a significant factor in
local working class struggle. The fact that this
rent-increase strike spread to all areas of
Scotl and, where the Sottish Special Housing
Association (SSHA) owned and managed houses, goes
some way to disproving Lowe's contention that they
remain 'localised' in terms of their impact or that
they were difficult to organise if a well organised
and active tenants' organisation was present.
Therefore. there are three main reasons :for
including this study of a rent strike in our
discussion. Firstly. it provides an account of the
first post-war attempt at rent decontroli secondly.
the rent-increase strike was organised by SSHA
tenants, and the issues focus on the contradictory
nature of the relationship between tenants and
different , social' landlords; and final I y. the
discussion provides us with additional analysis of
the links between the tenants' movement and wider
housing struggles in early post-war Glasgow.
3.3 The LandI ortis Bill
"In housing our first task was to build uore
homes and i t was done- one and a hal l' lIIIill ion new
homes in the last five years. .As a result of the
progress then made we switched the subsidies to
special needs such as sl um clearance. Now, faced

-258-
wi th the prohl em of :ma.ki ng the hest use of the
houses we have got, we are tackling rent
control". (8)
In the early post war years local authorities
and central government concentrated their energies
on the rebuilding of' Britain's housing stock and
little attention was given to rent control
policies. HO\Wever, as the above quotation f'rom
Macmillan makes clear, it was not long bef'ore the
state turned its attention towards such
considerations. The context in which this change
took pI ace was one where the theme of' 'improvi ng
living standards is the strongest of the period'
(B. Will iamson, 1990) . It was against this
hackground that the Conservative Party Conf'erence
passed a resolution on rent control in 1952. which
call ed f'or:
II A review of the Rent Restrictions Acts with a
view to bringing these Acts into line with modern
conditions and remedying the state of affairs which
now makes it impossibl e For owners to carry out
repairs". (9)
In response to this pressure f'rom its own
supporters the Conservative Government published a
White Paper in November 1953 which outlined their
housi ng programme as a whol e hut which was, in

-259-
large part, devoted to the • problem' of rent
control. (10) The White Paper was the forerunner to
the Housing Repairs and Rents (Scotl and) Act 1954-.
Thi s Act enabl ed a I andl ord, if he was wholly
responsible for t.he repairs to a house, to claim a
repairs increase of 4-0 per cent of the rent of a
controlled house. This was preceded in May 1953 by
the appointment of a committee, under the
chairmanship of Lord Sorn, to review the system of
val uation and rating. This reported in September
1954-, and was the forerunner to the Val uation and
Rating (Scotland) Act 1956. (11) This Act provided
two major changes: firstl y, the abolition of
• owners' rates and, secondly. a change in the
method of val uation. Despite these changes,
landlords, in the main, failed to achieve the
increased rents that they hoped for. This was
mainly because they refused to spend the
necessaril y I arge sums of capital on improvements.
Tenants usually carried out the repairs themselves,
and landlords had never been interested in doing
repai rs in any case. as the 194-5 Ridl ey Committee
had acknowledged:
"We might say that there is evidence of a
tendency among some owners to look upon house
property as an investment to give a perpetual

-260-
income without as much expenditure on repairs or
repl acements". (12)
However. the Government used the 1956 Act as an
ideal opportunity for raising the whole issue of
"low council rents", conciously ignoring the extent
to which council tenants were , subsidising'
themsel ves through rate contributions. The
Secretary of State for Scotland conducted this
offensive in a series of public speeches and
statements. and in circulars to local authorities.
One circular, issued in June of 1956. suggested
that rent had accounted for 10.5 per cent of
average earnings in 1938, but only 4.5 per cent in
1955. The state was urging local authorities to
review rent levels on the principle that, subsidies
should not be gi ven to 'those who do not need
them' and. that no one in 'genuine need of a house
should be asked to pay more rent than he (sic) can
reasonably afford' . (13) Local authorities were
being asked to use the 1956 Act to 'put their rent
levels on a more realistic footing' or, more
precisely. to increase rents on houses buil t and
tenanted after May 1956. This led to a discrepancy
in the assessed rents and the actual rent payed on
different houses. Houses built and tenanted before
May 1956 had their rents frozen for five years,

-261-
when they would then be assessed by the City
Assessor who was • cOlOpel1 ed' to base the
assess~ment on rents at 'fair market value'. Houses
built and tenanted after May 1956 could have their
rental s assessed and increased accordi ngl y. These
changes in rent pol icy were part ot' an overall
strategy by the state to raise rents throughout
Scotland. (14-)
Therefore, these series of reports and
parliamentary Acts were used as a political weapon
by the Conservative government to aid private
landlords and to force reluctant Labour-controlled
authorities to raise council house rents. These
deliberations resulted in the passing of the Rent
Act, 1957 which was described by one authority on
the subject thus:
"This Act introduces what is probably the most
extensive system of decontrol in the history of the
Rent Acts. In addition to houses in the London area
and Scotl and wi th a rateabl e val ue exceedi ng £4-0.
and elsewhere in England and Wales exceeding £30,
being taken out of control altogether and proviSion
being made for further decontrol by stages, the Act
entitles landlords to claim decontrol of dwellings
when they come into possession". (15)

-262-
The Act was aimed at ending the security that
tenants had enjoyed since the First World War,
extending powers of eviction, and allowed for
increased rentals in decontrolled houses. At a time
when there was a serious shortage of housing in
Scotland, with 124,000 on the waiting list in
Glasgow alone, this Act decontrolled 60,000 houses.
The pol icy of increasing rents fitted into the
dominant ideology of the period, which revolved
around the notion that inequality had been
eradicated and 'prosperi-ity' achieved. The final
piece in the complex legislative jigsaw, the
Housing Subsidies (Scotland) Act, had been passed
earl ier in 1957 almost unnoticed. This Act
developed from a report commissioned by the
Secretary of State for Scotland in 1955. This
committee had argued that:
.. _ •. local author I ties In Engl and and Wal es and
In Northern Ireland obtained in 1955 about twice
the rent income per house which the local
a.uthoritles in Scotland obtained". (16)
While acknowledging that average incomes in
Scotl and were 5 to 7 per cent lower than the UK
average this committee proposed that rents of local
authority houses in Scotl and should be increased.
This was subsequently written into the Act in the

-263-
form of a reduction in rate fund contributions to
local authority Housing Revenue Accounts and
increased rental charges for tenants. To repeat the
main thrust of the argument. this was the era of
"you've never had it so good" and working class
tenants of local authority housing were being
forced by the state to pay a I arger proportion of
their income on rents. As one councillor in Glasgow
put it:
"If' people can af'f'ord television sets. they can
af'f'ord to pay rent and rates increases". (17)
3.4 Not A Penny On The Rent
The 1957 Rent Act was opposed by tenants'
associations and the labour and trade union
movement throughout Britain. In early January 1957
a deputation of 100 women from the Saracen,
Craighall and Cowcaddens Tenants' Associations in
Glasgow met with Sir Anthony Eden to protest
against the implications of the Rent Bill. (18) In
late January the National Executive of the Labour
Party detailed plans to organise a nation-wide
campaign against the Act. (19) In mid- February 1957
over 100 tenants, mai nl y women, took part ina
demonstration in George Square, Glasgow to seek the
support of the Labour council in protesting against
the Rent Act. (20) In March, 6 people were arrested

-264--
at a demonstration organised by the National
Association of Tenants' and Residents in Trafalgar
Squares London. (21) In October 1957, tenants in
Dumfries who were invol ved in a rent strike, were
supported by striking Sanquhar and Kirconnel miners
in 'the biggest demonstration held in the South of
Scotland for many years'. (22) The simple point
being made here is that there was massive
opposition throughout the country to the whole idea
of rent increases to both private and local
authority houses. Both of the previous sections
have indicated the peculiar situation pertaining to
Scotland, in terms of lower average rentals in the
local authority sector and an intensive period of
tenants' struggl es on the rents issue before the
Second World War.
The state was al so faced with a particul ar
problem in Glasgow in achieving any increase in
rents of local authority houses but, as the
previous section indicated, had armed i tsel f with
ample legislative support with which to proceed.
The Corporation of Glasgow had not increased their
rents since August 1938. After complaints by the
leader of the Progressive Party on Glasgow
Corporation a sept\rate Inquiry, under the Local
Government (Scotl and) Act of 194-7, was set up in

-265-
1958. within seven weeks of the original complaint.
This Inquiry was to investigate whether the
Corporation had met with the provisions of section
7:J[ 5] of the Housing (Scotland) Act. 1950. (23)
Local authorities in Scotl and in the I ate 1950s,
under the stipulations of the 1950 Act, were
required to 'from time to time' review rents and
make such changes 'as circumstances may require'.
The author of this inquiry, C. J. D. Shaw, took
evidence for five days before finally ruling that
the Corporation had ignored factors 'essential' to
any proper review of rents. Thereafter. GI asgow
Corporation was forced into reviewing its rents
pol icy and agreed to rai se rents by an average of
2s. 6d. <12J2p) in 1959.
Nevertheless, the overall strategy adopted in
Scotland was to use the 1957 Housing and Subsidies
Act to force local authorities to raise rents, but
this was met with opposition throughout the
country. However, the SSHA, like local authorities,
was obliged by this Act to achieve a 'better
balance' between rents and rates by raising the
rents. The anomal ies between rents of SSHA houses
and those of the local authorities had been raised
as earl y as November 1949 by representati ves of
Glasgow Trades Council. (24) The difference. as one

-266-
leading tenant activist of this period pointed out,
was that:
" •.• the SSHA was not an el ected body 1 ike the
eoune i 1 . The Board of Management was appo i nted by
the Secretary of State for Scotl and, so had no
hesitation in informing its tenants of its
intentions to raise rents". (25)
The SSHA had reached an informal agreement
with Glasgow Corporation in October 194-5, not to
charge lower rents for houses of a simi 1 ar size
than the Corporation itself. The idea was to
achieve parity in rental levels. There was also an
agreement that, while the SSHA would build houses,
the Corporation would manage them, and that tenants
would be nominated by the City Factor, the official
charged with maintaining waiting-lists and
allocating houses. (26) This relationship was to be
fundamental I y al tered as a resul t of the SSHA' s
proposal to increase rents. In April 1957 the Board
of Management of the SSHA informed tenants and
local authorities that they were considering
increasing rents on the houses they owned. Prior to
this the SSHA had been obliged to fix rents after
negotiations with individual local authori ties.
Now, with the full authority of the state, it was
determined to impose a general rent increase

-267-
throughout Scotland. This was met with a widespread
protest by tenants of SSHA houses, trade unions and
local author i t i es throughout Scotl and, wi th miners
in Kirkaldy, Mid-Lothian and Cumnock threatening
strike action if' the SSHA went ahead with their
proposal. (27) After a thorough review of' the
situation the Board of' Management of' the SSHA. on
the 9th of" ,f anuary 1958, informed local authorities
by 1 etter. and tenants through a press reI ease,
that they would be going ahead wih the rent
increase, which would come into operation in
October 1958. The proposal was that the rent
increase in any particular house would not exceed
7s. 6d (37~p) except in cases where local authority
rents were higher, with a rent rebate scheme f'or
tenants with "household income" of £10. 15s (£10.
75p> a week or less. Tenants claiming a rebate were
required to give particulars of' their household
incomes, which would be 'treated in the strictest
conf'idence' . (28) The rent increase was more than
double the increase imposed by Glasgow Corporation
a year 1 ater. Ref'lecting the dominant ideology of'
the , oversubsidised' council tenant the SSHA
justi fied the proposed rent increase cl earl y i n
their press release:

-268-
" •.• the Scottish Special Housing Association
point out that at present the average cost of
providing and maintaining an Association house
(this is the average for all Association houses) is
about 30s a 'Week.. The average rent. on the other
hand. is 6s 7d. a 'Week. This leaves the Exchequer-
in other words the taxpayer- to pay 23s 5d.
The Association take the view that tenants who
can afford it can properly be expected to pay
reasonabl e rent but they attach great importance
also to the principle that no one should be denied
a house because he is unable to afford the rent
charged". (29)
Ignori ng the fact that most council and SSHA
tenants contributed to Exchequer funds through both
rates and tax payments, the Board of Management of
the SSHA were. intent on being at the forefront of
the Government's plans to reorganise rent
structures in Scotl and. In GI asgow, the pract 1 cal
effect of this proposal was that existing rents of
twa-apartment houses waul d be raised from £ 15 17s
4d a year, to £30; for three-apartments. from £18
lOs 4d to £33; for four-apartments, from £19 I1s 8d
to £36; and for five-apartments. from £20 15s 4d to
£39. (30) There was an immediate reaction from the
tenants' movement in Scotl and to this proposal to

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increase rents and to the rent rebate scheme which
was regarded as a 'means test'. The stigma attached
to means-tested benefits had not been eradicated in
worki ng cl ass consciousness, despite the supposed
era of 'prosperity' which they were living through.
At a hastily arranged conference of the
Scottish Council of Tenants' Associations (SCTA) on
the 12th of January, with 45 delegates present,
there were call s for industrial strike action and
for tenants to refuse to sign the new missives. (31)
The majority of SSHA tenants in Glasgow, amounting
to around 4,000 in 1958, had been allocated houses
straight from the Corporation waiting list and they
held the Corporat.ion responSible for the situation
that they were now faced with. As one of the
tenants in the Arden scheme described it:
"To use the colloquial term, we had been
conned. Because. here we were, we BUst have had our
name down for 7, or 9 years for a local
authority house registered with Glasgow Corporation
and we were ofYered an SSHA house. No one in
Glasgow Corporation, councillors included, had
intimated that there were any basic difYerence5
between the actual two tenancies. You had security
or tenure we were tol d, whi ch was I argel y true.
but you were not be i ng control I ed by your actual

-270-
authority with whom you had registered for
years". (32)
These tenants, it seems, were under the
impression that by being allocated a house through,
and hav i ng it factored by, the Corporat i on that
they would remain under the control of a
democratically elected local authority, rather than
a committee appointed undemocratically by the
Secretary of State for Scotl and. This was not the
case and the tenants, therefore, sought the support
of the Corporation in their opposition to these
proposals. The Arden tenants' association were the
first organisation to indicate the way that they
would like the protest to develop:
"This association views with grave concern the
SSHA rent scheme. copy of which is in your hands as
factors of these houses.
It is our intention to inform Glasgow
Corporation that this Association will oppose the
adoption of this differential rent proposal and
means test with all the means at our disposal.
~ trust that when the new missives are to hand
that the factors department will refrain from
sendi ng these out to the tenants to spare us the
troubl e of having to return them unsigned"". (33)

-271-
However, in a manner similar to that adopted
over the issue of the sale of the Merrylee houses,
the Labour group on Glasgow Corporation, while
opposed to the SSHA's proposal s. decided against
giving the Arden tenants the support they had
requested. Instead. the Corporation decided to make
its own views on the matter known to the SSHA in a
series of letters from the Town Clerk. (34) The
essence or their protest was that they might refuse
to ractor the houses owned by the SSHA in Glasgow
ir the rent-increase proposals were implemented.
They al so requested a meet i ng with the SSHA, and
representatives rrom the Corporation met with the
Board or Management or the SSHA on the 10th of'
March 1958 to express their objections to the
increase. They argued that the rentals proposed by
the SSHA were almost double the rentals or
comparabl e local author it y houses in GI asgow, and,
call ed on the SSHA to co-operate with them in
persuading the Government to reduce interest rates
and increase subsidies. In response, the SSHA
argued that rents would have to be increased even
wi thout recent increases in interest rates; that
the disparity between the two organisations' rent
structures could be reduced ir the Corporation were
to increase their own rents, and. wi th a cl ear

-272-
indication that there were wider considerations
behind the proposed increase that:
..... the Association :feared that if' they did not
charge rents wi thi n I iDa! ts approved by the
Secretary of' State :f or Scotl and. there was the
danger that Parliament aight instruct the
Association to cease their operations". (35)
This was no idle threat. The SSHA had to fix
rents with regard to the Exchequer subsidies
avalia.bl e and. within ranges approved by the
Secretary of State for Scotl and in agreement wi th
the Treasury. Consequently, after agreeing to give
'careful consideration' to the views expressed by
Glasgow Corporation. the SSHA informed all local
author it i es. on the 20th May 1958, that the rent
increase and rebate scheme would come into
operation at the beginning of October. The SSHA,
'in order to deflect some of the trouble' it might
cause, suggested postponing implemetation of the
rent increase until 1961. However, the Secretary of
State considered this scheme to be 'fair and
reasonable', despite his bel ief that 'there was
some danger of rent strikes and industrial
unrest'. (36) Therefore, local authorities. acting
as factors. were asked to inform tenants by letter
of the details of this scheme along with a 'Notice

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to Quit', new Missives and a guide to the Rebate
Scheme. (37 >
Whi l e t h e SSHA had been meet i ng wi th local
authorities, tenants' associations in Glasgow, and
elsewhere in Scotland, were organising their own
protests against the rent increase and rent rebate
proposal s. Throughout February and March of 1958
the S. C. T. A. organised two major conferences and
four other meetings of SSHA tenants. led one
deputation to the Scottish Office and three others
to the Board of Management of the SSHA. (38) On one
of these occasions the secretary of SCTA, Joseph
Cosgrove, was arrested for • organising and
conducting a procession through certain Edinburgh
streets without previous written permission' .
Cosgrove was eventually fined £3 for this
offence. (39) These deputations, like the one"i s
organised by the local authorities. had little
impact on the attitude of the SSHA. or the
Secretary of State for Scotland, who were intent on
impl ementing the rent increases and rebate scheme.
Tenants' associations, therefore, decided to
repsond to this intransigence with a refusal to
sign the new Missives and with a rent-increase
strike. (40) A meeting of delegates from tenants'
associations and trade unions. on the 22 of June

-274.-
1958, agreed to collect the unsigned Missives in
order to monitor the extent of support amongst SSHA
tenants. (4.1) Eight days after this conference
Glasgow Corporation, in protest at the rent
i nceases, inf'ormed the SSHA that they were
relinqishing the factoring of SSHA houses, hut
agreed to issue the Missives. (4.2) However, the
f'irst signs of' support for a rent-increase strike
came in the Arden housing scheme on the south-west
periphery of' Glasgow. There had heen an active
tenants' association in this scheme since at least
1955, and they had amassed a suhstantial body of
support within the scheme as well as raising the
necessary funds to organise such a campaign:
"We bad the distinct advantage as a tenants'
association by our communal acti vi ties, on a
relatively slBall scale but no doubt enjoyed
cOJUlUnally. o-r having been in existence -ror some
three or four years in Arden. We had also got
together a bank bal ance of about £600. whi ch was
not an inconsiderable SUlB in 1958. So, it meant
that as well as being the largest scheme in Glasgow
of SSHA tenants we had the added advantage of
having some resources to do something about it. We
set up a comaittee in the summer of 1958,
specifically to collect the Missives and JDOnitor

-275-
support in Arden. We also attracted the support o~
SSHA tenants in other schemes in GI asgow- Ca.d.der
and Toryglen. With 1. (,00 or so houses in Arden owe
owere the 1 argest SSHA scheme in GI asgow. owere
active and determined to do something about it. We
also attracted the attention politically o~ certain
members o~ the Communist Party and two schemes in
Clydebank.- Fai~ley and Linnvale- and the Scottish
Council of Tenants' Associations. As owell as being
opposed to the rent increase ~ argued that. ~or a
co.parable house. owe would accept any increase that
Glasgow Corporation agreed on. We met with the
Board of Management o~ the SSHA and. of course. it
was entirely ~ruitless. There was no way ~ could
meet on co.mon ground". (43)
The Arden tenants' association had been active
on a number of issues for some years and, with the
necessary financial and human resources they had
accumulated, were the first tenants' organisation
in Scotland to collect the unsigned Missives and
organise a rent-increase strike. (44) They organised
the rent-increase strike with posters, using a
loudspeaker van and through a series of public
meetings in the scheme. These meetings, apart fom
one open-air meeting on the 2nd of July 1958, were
held in a local school hall which held a capacity

-276-
of 400 and. as some of them were attended by over
1,000 Arden tenants, the tenants' associ ation had
to provide a tannoy system to relay the speeches to
the audience outside the hall. It was a well
organised campaign which managed to gain the
support of 95 per cent of Arden tenants who refused
to sign the Missives or pay the rent increase. The
issue was analysed specifically in class terms
during a speech at a public meeting by the
chairperson of Arden tenants' association:
"You know perfectly well that we're excluded
from indulging in party politics . . . At the same
tlae. of' course. we want to make clear that any
authorlty- be it Glasgow Corporation. be it a
central Government of any colour- when they impose
any rent increase will be fought to the bitter end.
We happen to have a central Government In power
Just now which Is more vicious than any other
colour which is liable to come in, and we happen to
be concentrating our energies to fighting their
pol icles. Because, it's quite clear that they are
the viII ians of the piece . . . . Gl asgow Corporation,
should they attempt to impose a rent increase. they
will be fought al so. as will any Government
a.ttempt i ng to lower the standard of I I v I ng of the

-277-
people- most particularly the 'WOrldn&, class
peopl e. " (4-5)
The threat to extend the rent strike to
Corporation tenants never materialised. However. in
August 1958 the SSHA did give one small concession
to the tenants by excluding the 1,700 houses built
prior to the war in special areas (known as
"distressed areas" ) f'rom their general rent
scheme. (4-6) The Arden tenants' association had been
arguing that the SSHA should only raise rents to
comparable levels to those proposed by local
authorities. Their strategy was to f'ight all rent
increases but, ~ailing that, to keep rent increases
to as Iowa level as possible. They were supported
in this campaign within Arden by the SCTA and
invited speakers ~rom CI ydebank Town Council. The
Arden tenants' association also threatened to put
up munici pal candidates against the local
councillor i~ he supported the imposition of' rent
increases and began to discuss the possibil ity o~
taking out an Interm Interdict against the SSHA.
However, Glasgow Corporation re~used to support
the protest organised by the Arden tenants, and
other tenants' associations in Glasgow, on the
grounds that they had no control over the SSHA rent
proposals. In addi tiOll. the Corporation also

-278-
suggested that they could not re-house tenants
evicted by the SSHA. (47) This was in sharp contrast
to the response of some other local authorites in
Scotl and. Midlothian County Council, for exampl e.
sought out an Interm Interdict to prevent the SSHA
from increasing the rents. This action was rejected
in a Judgement by Lord Patrick in the Court of
Session in mid-September. (48) The SSHA immediately
leafleted local tenants informing them of the legal
Judgement and asking them to pay the rent increase.
However, as 1958 advanced the dispute widened
and by September there were still 20.000 of the
38,000 Missi ves not returned to the SSHA. Tenants
from Bathgate. Boness. Cumnock. Kirkaldy. Oakley
and many other towns in Scotland joined in the
rent-increase strike. On the 22nd of' September.
three days after the result of the Midlothian case
was announced, around 1, 000 tenants from allover
Scotland returned thousands of' unsigned Missives to
the SSHA headquarters in Edinburgh. The SCTA, who
had organised this demonstration, al so announced
that they were considering raising an action for
Interdict preventing the SSHA from increasing their
rents. (49) Questioning the I egi timacy of the
widespread support for the rent-increase strike,
and using the rhetoric of Cold War ideology, Sir

-279-
Ronal d Thomson. chairperson of the SSHA, had
earl ier argued that I conununist agitators had been
misleading the tenants'. Thompson also indicated
that the SSHA would only use eviction proceedings
against tenants as ' a last resort' (50) In any case,
the SSHA proceeded to impl ement the rent increase
and rent rebate scheme from the 1st of October 1958
with the full support of the state:
" ••• Mr Nixon Brown. the Under-Secretary of
State, told Council that they • were ful f'ill ing a
national duty in introducing the new rent scheme.
including the rebate scheme. He assured the Council
0-( Management that Xi ni sters were whol eheartedl y
behind the Association in the matter and would give
all possible support". (51 >
By November the SSHA were issuing notices to
tenants to end the rent strike and pay the new
increase along with arrears. They al so threatened
tenants with legal action if they failed to abide
by these notices. However, the initial move by the
Arden tenants was now spreading to most areas of
Scotl-and where the SSHA owned houses.
The support for the rent-increase strike
remained sol id in most areas and the campaign was
now being co-ordinated by the SeTA. The rent stike
continued along similar lines to those already

-280-
described into 1959, and the SCTA were responsible
for organising most of the activities that tenants'
associations were involved in. The pol icy of the
SCTA was simil ar to that of the Arden tenants'
association; to oppose the SSHA proposals through a
rent-increase strike and the return of unsigned
Missi ves. However. the SCTA were not only the
representative organisation for all Scottish
tenants' groups, but were more expl icit about the
political nature of the campaign against the SSHA.
The majority of the Executive Committee of the
SCTA were active in trade unions. some were active
in the Labour Party and number of its leading
spokespersons were active in the Communist Party-
mainly in Glasgow. The latter of this group were
continuing the early post-war Communist Party
tradition of agitation around issues of
reproduction- housing in particular- alongside
trade union activity in the factories and the
shipyards. It is not surprising, therefore. that
most of the leading figures in this organisation
were men, refl ecting the patriarchal structure of
the labour market in Glasgow in the 1950s. Their
strategy in opposing the SSHA proposals was also
conducted along traditional lines. They sought the
support of Labour MFs, Labour controlled local

-281-
authorities and the trade unionf s. They also
organised deputations and demonstrations to the
SSHA headquarters in Edinburgh and argued ~or local
authorities to take up 'test cases' through the
courts against the SSHA. Despite the ~act that
around 10,000 o~ the SSHA houses were tenanted by
miners, there is little evidence that union support
went beyond the passing of resol utions in support
of the tenants at union branch meetings. Scottish
Labour MPs merely o~~ered to act as intermediaries
between the SCTA and SSHA. The most success~ul
aspect to the SCTA campaign, aside ~rom gathering
widespread support amongst tenants, was in their
abil ity not only to attain the support o~
individual Labour councillors, but convincing
Midlothian County Council to mount a legal
challenge to the SSHA in the courts.
As indicated earlier, however, the Midlothian
case fail ed in the courts and provided the SSHA
with the legal backing for the rent increase that
they were con~ident of achieving all along. The
SSHA were also confident that this result in the
courts would bring the rent strike to a successful
conclusion. As the rent-increase strike moved into
1959 the effects of the Midlothian result on

-282-
tenants' association's. abil i ty to sustain a
campaign began to come under scrutiny internally.
At a meeting of' the SCTA in Glasgow in January
1959. with 510 delegates in attendance, it was
reported that most local authorities had decided
against taking any further action against the SSHA
after the Midlothian result and that the rent
strike was losing support in some areas. with many
tenants worried about the arrears that they were
building up. (52) The delegates decided to gather
information about the extent of support for
cont i nu i ng wi th the rent st r ike. call ed on Labour
councillors and MPs to support their campaign, but,
crucially, indicated that they would be willing to
meet with the Management Commi ttee of' the SSHA to
discuss the situation. This was an impl icit
indication that the membership of' the SeTA were
beginning to doubt the possibility of' the rent
strike being successf'ul. The SSHA, having won the
legal battle, showed l i t t l e sign of' being willing
to compromise and ignored the appeals for
negotiations:
IIJIr Finlay Hart reported that deputation to
Edinburgh had failed to arrange a meeting with SSHA
Management Committee. but in a phone conversation
with JIr Hall ey. Mr Hall ey had suggested that any

-283-
proposals we had to mak.e should be submitted In
~itlng which would be placed beCore the Committee.
Hr Hall ey stated he had been Instructed he had to
meet no one. ne 1 ther tenants or local authorities
In this particular dispute". (53)
Tenants' associations throughout Scotland were
indicating to the SeTA that support for the rent
strike was still being supported by between 60 and
75 per cent of' tenants in the majority of areas.
Despite these claims the SSHA obviously felt that
they had won the struggl e with the "test case" in
Midlothian and intended to wait on individual
tenants to pay the increase, with a little added
encouragement by threatening court action. Whil e
the SSHA were conducti ng legal action against
individual tenants they certainly had no intention
of' meeting .with representatives of the SeTA to
discuss any compromise on the rent increase.
The SeTA persisted with the rent strike through
the earl y months of 1959. They continued to seek
the assistance of Scottish Labour MPs to open
negotiations with the SSHA, a move which the MPs
agreed to. (54) It was at this stage that the SSHA
decided to take the initiative and prosecute
individual tenants f'or rent arrears. Seven actions
were defended by individual tenants' associations

-284--
but the SCTA, with the monetary support being
partl y provided by the Arden tenants, decided to
employ a solicitor to def'end a Kirkaldy tenant in a
• test case' in the Sheriff Court. The tenant in
this case had built up arrears of rent previous to
the rent strike and the SCTA fought the case on a
legal technicality related to the validity or
otherwi se of the • Not i ce to QU it· issued by the
SSHA. The nature of this case indicates that the
SCTA were making a desperate attempt to provide
tenants on rent strike with a legal victory which,
in reality, had no real hope of success. (55) While
the SCTA continued to emphasise the central ity of
the rent increase, the lengthy legal wrangle
diverted attention from the main issue and
concentrated their own resources on def'ending the
Kirkaldy case. Scottish Labour MPs were also urging
all SSHA tenants, even bef'ore the Kirkaldy case had
been heard in court, to abandon the rent strike and
start paying the increase. The Kirkaldy case led to
disputes within the SCTA and, inevitably ended in a
legal judgement in favour of the SSHA. (56) The SSHA
issued notices to tenants to start paying up
arrears and began taking court action against any
tenant who was in arrears to the extent of £10 or

-285-
more. To the consternation of' the SCTA there was
still no space f'or negotiations:
" ••• We have always maintained and s t i l l do that
a meeting bet\<oleen the two parties. with give and
take on both sides. could resolve this dispute
without ~urther recourse to the courts . . . . Even in a
major war there are armistice tal kg and a peace
treaty but it seems that only unconditional
surrender wi II sat I s~y the general sta~~ o~ then
SSHA ••••1 (57)
At the same time, the SCTA were considering an
appeal against t,he Kirkaldy decision and urging
tenants to continue with the rent strike. The
Kirkaldy appeal never material ised, but the rent
strike continued right through to 1960. In April
1960 there were 1,254. tenants in houses under the
management of' the SSHA still on rent strike- most
of' them in Glasgow- and a f'urther sixteen tenants
in SSHA houses f'actored by local authorities. (58)
The majority of' those still refusing to pay the
rent increase in Glasgow were tenants in the Arden
scheme where the rent strike began. The Arden
tenants' association provided the ~unding for the
last legal 'test case' against the SSHA by a tenant
in the Cadder housing scheme in Glasgow. This case
resul ted from the SSHA raising an action against

-286-
one tenant- Mr James W. Maxwell- in respect of
unpaid arrears amounting to £9, 13s. 1d. The case,
based on a legal technicality relating to the
'Notice to Quit', was heard in the Small Debt Court
before being transferred to the Sheriff Court in
Glasgow, where sheriff Norman L. Walker ruled in
favour of the SSHA. The tenant appealed against
this ruling and, unusually for debts of under £50,
the case went forward to the Court of Session in
Edinburgh where Lord Guthrie held the appeal to be
'competent, but quoad ultra refused the appeal' (59)
To all intents and purposes this was the end of the
rent strike, aptly summed up by one leading
activist:
"It died a death. It's Just like the :flower. it
blooms, i t blossoms, i t shows it~s nice colours but

)
its got to die sometime and i t died and that was
it"(60}
Some individual tenants continued to refuse to
pay the rent increase right up until October 1960.
The maj ori ty, however, had begun paying the
increase after the decision in the Court of
Session. The SSHA began seeking revenge against
many of the activists involved in this rent strike,
by forcing them to pay the rent arrears accumulated
at £1 per week, wi th threats of further legal

-287-
action if they refused. (61) However, for those
involved in the rent strike, the final outcome was
not viewed as a total failure:
"It really wakened up the Labour Party.
indicating what actual obstruction could be made by
tenants when they made up their minds to do
something about it. I t was a partial success. The
ef'fect on the Labour Party was to pay a. bit DOre
interest in tenants' af'f'airs. because i t acted as an
impetus and encouragement to the Glasgow Council of'
Tenants' Associations. It was pleasant to do. it
was a lot of' hard work. i t was encoura.ging and very
pleasing to put a tap under local pol iticians and
under a bureaucratic incompetent organisation. as
the SSHA was then. They paid more attention to
repairs, there was more contact. there was DOre
attempts to do something. whereas previousl y they
Just sat back. and acted as a sort of' organ of'
1 andl ord Government... (62)
3.5. Conclusion
The rent str i ke under di scuss i on in thi s
chapter was an important event in the history of
the post-War tenants' movement and housing
struggl es in GI asgow, and in Scotl and general I y.
While it obviously ended with the main objectives
of the Arden tenants' association being defeated in

-288-
the courts, it was not a total failure. In a
similar vein to Lowe (1983), Saunders ( 1981 )
suggests that "urban struggles" are 'typically
fragmented, localised, strategical I y I imi ted and
politically isolated'. (63)
The Arden and all-Scotland rent strike lasted
for two years, was sustained through a well-
coordinated and collective campaign which went
beyond any reasonabl e notion of the • local' arena
and had far-reaching strategic goal s in mind; the
impl ications of which the SSHA and the state were
well aware of. The fact that the rent strike
remained 'politically isolated' (in the limited
sense that Saunders employes the term) was not the
fault of the Arden tenants or the SeTA. The tenant
activists, if not all those participating in the
rent str i ke, anal ysed the·· issue of rent increases
specifically in class terms and fully expected
support from the wider organised I abour movement.
The real failure was in the inability of the Labour
MPs and the trade union leadership to fully
comprehend the nature of the issues that the
tenants were fighting on. The governing ideology of
this I eadershi p. and in particul ar its attachment
to paternalism. ensured that it would adopt an
ambivalent attitude and approach to the demands of

-289-
the rent strikers (see R. Miliband, 1973 for a full
anal ysis of the characteristics of this ideology).
However, the rent strike ensured that most Scottish
local author i tes termi nated the factor i ng of SSHA
houses. To sustain a rent strike for two years,
against the prevailing mood of 'affluence' and
• privatism' , is no small achievement and was
regarded by at I east some of those i nvol ved as a
'partial victory'. Nevertheless, the longer term
implications for tenants' associations and housing
struggles in Glasgow were significant.
The Merryl ee campaign agai nst the sal e of
council houses had ensured that the provision of
council housing would continue in Glasgow. This
campaign, as outl ined in chapter two, took place
against the early post-War mood for social
improvement. In this context, tenants' associations
combined with trade unions, the Communist Party and
elements within the Labour Party to prevent the
sal e of the Merryl ee houses. The Arden and all-
Scotland rent strike, in stark comparison, took
pI ace dur i ng a per i od when it was all eged that
social inequality, if not eradi cated, had
diminished substantially. partly through the
creation of 'full employment'. For the majority of
Glasgow's working class the prospect of living in

-290-
new housing schemes was certainly regarded as a
signiIicant improvement. The state. exploiting this
new situation and the ideology OI the 'a:f:fluent
worker', was intent on using the SSHA in Scotland
to :force the cost o:f these improvements onto the
working class through rent increases. On the other
hand, the Arden tenants rej ected the ideology OI
the 'aIIluent worker' and organised the rent strike
accordingly. In a period when industrial disputes
were sparse and the cl imate o:f the Cold War was
dominant. it is all the more surprising that the
Arden tenants and the SeTA were able to sustain the
rent strike :for so long. The :fact that they 'Were
eventually deIeated in the courts was, perhaps,
inevitable and the main 'Weakness in their campaign
was the :fail ure to organise any coherent :form o:f
direct action alongside the rent strike and the
legal battl e.
This :failing had as much to do with structural
Iactors as any organisational :failings on the part
OI those involved in the rent strike. The
imposition of rent increases was taking place at
the same time as the majority of Glasgow's working
class 'Were being moved to the peripheral schemes or
the • New Towns'. As chapter four makes cl ear, the
orignal tenants in the peripheral schemes had a

-291-
number or maj or probl ems to deal wi th when they
moved into their new houses and i t was some years
berore tenants' associations consolidated their
position amongst tenants. Therefore, the majority
of the tenants of Corporation houses were hardly in
an ideal position to organise a rent strike. Had a
rent strike amongst Corporation tenants
materialised at the same time as the one conducted
by SSHA tenants, then the chall enge to the state
may have been more successrul. However, as in the
case of trade union support, this never occurred.
The ract that the wider labour movement never
mobil ised support behind the rent strike had more
important implications for tenants ruture struggles
in the city.
Despite the fact that some of the leading
activists in the rent strike were also active in
trade unions and. more importantl y. the Communist
Party they failed to attract significant support
from these organisations. The Communist Party had
been active on housing issues throughout the war
and in the early post-War years, with some success.
By the 1950s most of their attention was placed on
industrial issues with a corresponding decl ine in
activity around housing issues. The eventual defeat
of the rent strike in the courts had an impact on

-292-
the pol itical strategy of the Communist Party in
Glasgow. While individual party members continued
to play an active role in tenants' associations,
this was the last occas_ion in which the Communist
Party played any significant role in tenant
politics in the city. The Labour Party continued to
consolidate their position in the organs of the
local state and gave tenants' associations little
recognition. The debate on working class housing.
and particularly rents, was put at the back of the
pol itical agenda for the time being. As the
fall owi ng chapters wi 11 show, however, i t was not
the end of the tenants' movement or, indeed, of
housing struggles.
***********************
-293-
CHAPTER THREE
NOTES
1. H.F. Moorhouse et al. (1972) pp151-152.
2. D. Englander (1983). A.D. Heskin (1983) has
provided a similar account of the tenants' movement
in America during the same period covered by
Englander.
3. S. Darner (1980). p103. While attention has
obviously been focused on Glasgow during this
period there were rent strikes throughout Scotland,
England and Wales during 1915. See Ann and Vincent
Flynn (1978). p33.
4. S. Darner (1985). p38. The onl yother detail ed
account of the Clydebank Rent Strike is provided by
I. Russell in J. Hood [Ed] (1988).
5. N.C. Abbey (1957). p6.
6. These rent-increase strikes remain undocumented.
The author was personally involved in organising a
rent strike in Dumbarton during this period. From
contacts made at a raIl y i n London, attended by
around 50 Labour MFs. it was obvious that there
were sporadic rent strikes throughout the country
including Clydebank. Glasgow, London, Sheffield and
Walsall.
-294--
7. S. Lowe (1986). pill.
8. Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister. speaking at
Scottish Unionist Association's annual conference
at Ayr. 12-4--57. Quoted in the Glasgow Herald 13-4--
57.
9. Quotation taken from The Educational Commentary
on Current Affairs, No 4-0. November 1952. London:
Dail y Worker. Pamphl et kindl y provided by Audrey
Canning.
10. Houses-The Next Step. London: HMSO. Cmd 8996.
11. Scottish Home Department <1954-). This report
was followed by the Valuation and Rating (Scotland)
Act which becme law on the 2nd August 1956.
12. Report of Ridley Committee (194-5) London: HMSO.
Cmd 6621. These points had already been made
expl icitly to the 1918. Hunter Committee, and the
1920 Salisbury Committee.
13. See R. D. Cramond (1966) note8, p74--7.
14-. Department of Health for Scotland (1956).
15. N.C. Abbey (1957). p8.
16. Department of Health for Scotland. (1956). p8.
17. Councillor McKinlay, (Drumchapel ward) • quoted
in the Drumchapel Tenant, 1-3-57. Held in the
Broady ColI ection. Uni nversi ty of GI asgow Library

-295-
AM 20. The theme of' the • af'fl uent council tenant'
was also taken up in a Conservative Party Broadcast
on the 7th of' May 1958. This broadcast contrasted
life in Drumchapel, with parked cars in the street
and some famil ies with income above £4-,000 a year.
with life for the poor tenants of private landlords
in the city. The images portrayed in this broadcast
was one of squalor and decay in private rented
accomodation in the inner urban areas with one of a
consumer heaven of' the isolated multiapplianced
home in new council housing on the city's
per i phery. See report in the GI asgow Heral d. 8-5-
58.
20. GI asgow Herald 21-2-57.
21. Glasgow Herald 18-3-57. This demonstration was
addressed by Aneurin Bevan.
22. See the Glasgow Herald 30-9-57, 10-10-57 and
17-10-57
23. Department of Health for Scotland (1958). Shaw
later became better known as Lord Kilbrandon.
Witnesses to this inquiry included tenants'
associations, trade unions and the Communist Party
(GI asgow Commi ttee). They were opposed by

-296-
residents' associations, ratepayers, the West of
Scotland Liberal Federation. the Association of
Owner Occupiers and the infamous GI asgow Property
Owners' and Factors Association. Correspondence
relating to the Corporation's view on this Inquiry
can be found in SRA: DTC 8/20/47.
24. Letter from James C. Hill. secretary of Glasgow
Trades Council, to the Town Clerk dated 17th
November 1949. in SRA: DTC 8/2/56/1.
25. Finlay Hart. 60 Exiting Years. p121. Manuscript
copy hel d in CI ydebank District Library. Rer: 92
HAR L.C. Thanks to Pat Malcolm ror allowing me to
peruse thi s and other mater i al donated by Fi nl ay
Hart. Finlay Hart was a lire-long active Communist,
trade unionist and tenant activist on Clydeside in
the post-war years and played a central role in the
rent-increase strike under discussion in this
chapter.
26. Notes on Rents of SSHA Houses, for Bail ie
Taylor, dated 12-11-58. Held in SRA: DTC 8/20/2.
27. Report of Scottish Special Housing conference,
Gl asgow Central Hall s 8-12-57. Document hel d in
Finlay Hart Collection, Clydebank Library, No 25.
28. Details outlined in a letter from SSHA to local
authorities, dated 9-1-58 and in Press Release of

-297-
same date. Documents Held in Finl ay Hart
Collection. No 25.
29. SSHA press statement. dated 10th January, 1958.
Held in Finlay Hart Collection. No 25.
30. Letter from D. H. Hall ey. secretary and
solicitor for SSHA, to Town CI erk, Glasgow
Corporation, dated 9th January 1958. Document held
in SRA: DTC 8/20/56/1.
31. Minutes of a Special Conference, on Sunday 12th
January 1958. re: the proposed .. New Rent Scheme"
which is to be imposed on tenants of SSHA houses.
Document held in Finlay Hart Collection, No 25.
32. Interview with Mr Chas Watters, chairperson of
Arden Tenants' Association in 1958, 14-3-89. A
special thanks is due to Mr Watters for bringing
this campaign to my attention and for providing me
with tapes of publ ic meetings held in Arden in
1958.
33. Letter from Mr E. Ann. secretary of Arden
Tenants' Association, to the Town Clerk. dated 20-
1-58. Document held in SRA: DTC 8/20/2.
34. See documents in SRA: DTC 8/20/2, and DTC
8/20/56/1.
35. Meet i ng between representat i ves from Gl asgow
Corporation and SSHA in Edinburgh, 10th March 1958.

-298-
Document hel d in SRA: DTC 8/20/56/1. Other local
authorities had gone further in their protest than
Glasgow Corporation. Saltcoats had. without
success, requested that the SSHA sell their houses
to the local authority. Clydebank Town Council
convened a conference, with 40 representatives from
local authorities in attendance. Some of these
authorities had al ready decided not to send the
Missi ves out to tenants and had refused to factor
SSHA houses. Two of these authorities, Musselburgh
and Kirkaldy had also sought legal advice and were
intending to take out an Interm Interdict against
the SSHA. See Precis of Proceedings of Conference
held in CI ydebank, on Wednesday, 25th June 1958.
Document held in SRA: DTC 8/56/20/1.
36. Quoted in T. Begg (1987), p184.
37. Letter from D.H. Halley, secretary of SSHA, to
Town CI erk. Gl asgow Corporation, dated 20th May
1958. Document held in SRA: DTC 8/20/56/1
38. Report of the Scottish Council of Tenants'
Associations Annual General Meeting, GI asgow, 6th
April 1958, in The Drumchapel Tenant, 16-5-58.
Document held in Broady Collection AM 20.
39. See report in the GI asgow Heral d, 7-5-58. A
woman activist from Kircaldy was also charged with
unl awful I y c o l l ecting money for SCTA on this

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occassion. Joseph Cosgrove died in April 1959 in
the middle of the struggle against the SSHA.
40. See report of SCTA meeting in the Glasgow
Herald 26-5-58.
41. See report in the Glasgow Herald, 23-6-58.
42. Letter from Town Clerk to SSHA, dated 30-6-58.
Document held in SRA: DTC 8/20/56/1. Another 12
local authorities decided to stop factoring SSHA
houses, but al so ref'used to co-perate in sending
out the Missives.
43. Interview with Mr Chas Watters. See note 32.
44. The Arden tenants' association was involved in
a wide range of' activities prior to the rent-
increase strike. Their main activity prior to 1958
was a campaign to get a footbridge buil t across a
railway- or, as they preff'ered to call it: 'the
Puggy'. See documents in SRA: DTC 8/20/2.
45. Mr Chas Watters, chairperson of Arden tenants'
association, speaking at pub I ic meeting Jul y 1958.
Taped copies of meeting in my possession.
46. See report in The Scotsman, 22-8-58. These
houses had been built by the original Association-
The Scottish Special Areas Housing Association-
before i t became known as the SSHA in 1937. See T.

-300-
Begg (987) for the official, and uncritical,
history of the SSHA.
47. Letter from Town Clerk, Glasgow Corporation to
Cadder Tenants' Association, dated 19-8-58.
Document held in SRA: DTC 8/20/56/1.
48. Sec report in Glasgow Herald, 20-9-58. West
Lothian, Ayrshie and Lanarkshire County Council's
had also sought legal advice regarding raiSing an
action against the SSHA.
49. See report in Glasgow Herald. 22-9-58.
50. See report in Glasgow Herald. 5-9-58.
51. Quoted in T. Begg (1987), p185.
52. Minute of SSHA Tenants All Scotish Conference,
convened by Scottish Council of Tenants'
Associations, held in Woodside Halls, Glasgow:
Sunday. 18th January, 1959. Document held in Finlay
Hart colI ection.
53. Minutes of SCTA extended committee meeting.
held in Woodside Halls, Glasgow, 1st February 1959.
54. Letter from Tom Oswal d MP to SCTA, dated 2n
February 1959. Document held in Finlay Hart
collection.
55. The tenant involved in this case had been
served the 'Notice to Quit' for rent arrears on 1st

-301-
Jul Y 1958. three months bef'ore the rent increase.
The I egal technical i ty reI ated to wether the SSHA
lawyer had "signed" the Notice to Quit. Theref'ore,
the tenant had been in arrears bef'ore the rent
increase had been imposed and was not the ideal one
in which to chall enge the val idi ty of' the SSHA
case. The f'act that earl ier rent strikes had been
prolonged through rulings about legal
technical ities is, perhaps, the only reason that
the SCTA were optimistic of' winning in this
instance. See S. Darner, 1985 f'or account of' legal
wrangles during the Clydebank rent strike.
56. The disputes within the SCTA were voiced at a
meeting on Sunday the 26th April, 1959. Document
held in Finaly Hart collection. The judgement in
the Kirkaldy case came on 3rd June 1959: Sherif'f'
Court of' Fif'e and Kinross at Kirkaldy. SSHA against
William Sommerville.
57. Letter f'rom James Malcolm. secretary of' SCTA,
addressed to SSHA, dated 29th June 1959. Document
held in Finlay Hart collection.
58. See T. Begg (1987) p18B.
59. Court of' Session Report, No 45. July 14th 1960,
SSHA Ltd, Pursuers (Respondents), James W. Maxwell,
Def'ender (Appel ant>. Quoad ul tra: "used in the
written pleadings of' an action to indicate the

-302-
poi nt beyond which the defender makes no further
admission of the pursuer's all egations". Iseabail
Macl eod, Ruth Martin and Pauline Cairns [Ed's1
<1988 ) The Pocket Scots Dictionary. Aberdeen
University Press.
60. Taped interview with Mr Chas Watters, 14-3-89.
61. Letter from SSHA to Mr Finlay Hart, dated 27th
October, 1960. Document held in Finlay Hart
colI ection.
62. Taped interview with Mr Chas Watters, 14-3-89.
63. P. Saunders (1981) p276.

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CHAPTER FOUR
TENANTS' ASSOCIATIONS IN CASTLEMILK
4.1 Introduction
In order to assess some of the changes that
have taken pI ace in the tenants' movement in the
post-War period this chapter provides a discussion
of the development of tenants' associations in
Castlemilk, a large peripheral housing scheme
located on the south-east edge of the city. As the
discussion in chapter one has shown, the four major
peripheral housing schemes were buil t as a resul t
of the post-War restructuring of GI asgow' s labour
and housing markets. They were regarded at the time
as providing a solution to Glasgow's housing
'problem'. In the process the needs of the original
tenants were never seriously considered, by a
Labour Party that had become anchored within the
local state <M. Savage, 1989>' A consideration of
how tenants in one scheme responded to this
situation advances our understanding of the post-
War tenants' movement. However, this is not the
only reason for choosing one of the peripheral
schemes as a case study. In the 1980s the local
authority peripheral housing schemes in Scotland
have become the focal point of state urban and

-304--
social policy initiatives. In 1988 Castlemilk.
along with Wester Hailes (Edinburgh), Whitfield
(Dundee), Ferguslie Park (Paisley), was selected by
the Scottish Office as one of the areas for a
'major' urban regeneration initiative: New Life for
Urban Scotland (Scottish Office. 1988>' Castlemilk,
therefore, provides a good exampl e of how tenants'
associations have responded to the activities of
the state throughout this period. Some commentators
leave little scope for such an analysis:
..... In the new Glasgow these estates are simply
peripheral to requirements and stand like monuments
to an age-old problem that has never gone away."(l>
The age-old problem is the creation of a cordon
sani-taire between the middle class and the
i ncreasi ngl y marginalised reservoirs of' the
socially and economically disadvantaged. This is
apparent in contemporary Glasgow, where the attempt
has been made to separate the poor in the
peripheral housing schemes f'rom the symbolic city
of corporate and cultural development, so that they
do not impinge upon the plans of the image makers:
a late-twentieth century Glaswegian version of' the
'Gold Coast and the Slum'! This has been an aspect
of' city 1 ife intermittently since the building of
the anc i ent cit i es of' Athens and Rome, whi ch were
-305-
above all else 'fortifications against hostile
strangers' (J. Raban, 1974). A newer version is
evident in Glasgow in the 1980s where the plans of
the state make explicit reference to city centre
developments within the context of a "walled city"
(see Scottish Development Agency, 1986), As in the
past, however, there are those who are will ing to
chall enge this , tal e of two ci ties' and have
organised collectively to raise their own
questions- from 'inside the whale'- about the
quality of the environment in which they live and
its relationship to the city and society as a
whole.
By concentrating on one of the largest
peripheral housing schemes in GI asgow, Castl emil k,
this chapter will be looking at the extent to which
council tenants' organisations responded to living
on the edge of the city. Castlemilk is not an
amorphous mass, despite the fact that it is similar
in size of population to the town of Perth. It is a
loca~ion where a section of the working class live
and struggl e with the social economic forces that
shape all of our lives, many of them undoubtedly
living in conditions of severe poverty.
If we consider various indicators describing
social conditions it could be argued that

-306-
Castlemilk is in permanent recession. In March
1989(2) 2,547 Castlemilk residents were registered
as unemployed. This represented an overall
unemployment rate of' 22.8 per cent, compared with
17.1 per cent in Glasgow District and 12.6 per cent
in Strathclyde Region, with some parts of' the
scheme suff'ering much higher unemployment rates.
These f'igures exclude people involved in a range of'
temporary "employment" schemes, those aged 55-pI us
who have been unemployed for over two years and the
many women who have absolutely nothing to gain from
"signing on". Male unemployment was particularly
high, standing at 30.9 per cent, compared with 23.1
per cent in Glasgow and 15.9 per cent in
Strathcl yde. The proporti on of' men unemployed f'or
over a year was around 55 per cent and 1 in 5 of'
the male unemployed in Castlemilk were part of what
is known as the very long term unemployed (f'ive
years or more). Whil e, on the surface, f'emale
unemployment- standi ng at 10. 5 per cent in March
1989- may seem less severe it is probable that
there are signif'icant numbers of' women
unregistered, ref'lecting the administration of' the
benefit system. In 1987, (3) 55 per cent of
Castl emil k pupil s I ef't school without any 0 grade
or Higher qual ifications. Only 0.9 per cent owned

-307-
their own homes compared with approximately 30 per
cent for Glasgow and over 44 per cent for Scotland.
68 per cent of primary school chil dren (compared
with 47 per cent in Glasgow City) were recieving
free school meal s. In June 1990 7, 136 of tenants
(70.2 per cent) in Castlemilk were in receipt of
housing benefit(4), 3,528 of these tenants were on
income support, a reliance upon state support which
indicates the prevalence of low income levels
within the scheme. Castlemilk is one_of the many
areas in the Clydeside conurbation which have been
designated an 'Area for Priority Treatment' by
Strathcl yde Regional Council. The Social Work
Department estimated that 80 per cent of their
cases in Castlemilk were poverty related. Put
bluntly, the residents of Castlemilk have been the
victims of specifically acute and relentless
problems originating from the transformation that
British capitalism has undergone in the last
decade, and represent what some writers have
perniciously described as "underclass" communities
(see, for instance, R. Dahrendorf, 1987).
It is not surprising, therefore, that in the
1980s the peripheral estates have increasingly
become a 'probl em' for the state with a
corresponding increase in the activity of pol icy

-308-
makers and 'poverty prof-essional s' in these areas
(see G. C. Mooney, 1988 >. At all level s of
government in Scotland, from the Scottish Office to
Strathclyde Region and Glasgow District Council's
the problems facing the peripheral estates have, in
recent years. received increasing attention.
However, what is often forgotten in accounts of
peripheral estates, and other council housing
schemes, is that the people who I ive there have
formed their own organisations to promote their own
case for better facilities and conditions across a
wide range of serv ices. It is these concrete
everyday practices which have led to the growth of
what Williams (1977) referred to as a 'structure of
feeling' in places like Castl emil k. The settings in
which social relations are constituted are
significant physical contexts for action which
provide important definitions of 'problems' from
the inside. The activities of tenants' associations
are diversified and, as the discussion of the
'community studies' I iterature in the introductory
chapter indicated, in some respects, this will be
as a result of certain factors at particular times
in the life of the scheme. Tenants' associations
may be regarded, as many commentators have
suggested, as disparate and defensive organisations

-309-
which arise in reaction to very specific situations
and for I imi ted moments in time. It has al so been
sugge sted that these or gani sat ions rarel y out I ast
the particular issue which led to their development
(J. Cowl ey, 1979 and S. Lowe, 1986) This is onl y
partially true, and the evidence from Castlemilk
suggests that people's involvement in tenants'
associations can continue for a long number of
years and for various reasons. The Castlemilk
tenants' associ ation, for instance, has been in
existence since 1955 to the present day, and there
is at 1 east one person who has remained act i ve
throughout these years and many others who have
been active i ntermi t tentl y. While tenants'
associations may not attain the same level of
combination in defence of common interests of. for
example, Trade Unions, they can play a significant
part in developing a critical consciousness on a
particular issue or the general situation of
tenants which enhances the potential for
• community' sol idarity and co-operation. Operating
in a political environment that provides them with
little representative input to the system, tenants'
associations can also challenge the decisions that
affect them which are made by 'urban gatekeepers'.
including housing official s. councillors.

-310-
government civil servants and so forth. They do not
necessarily accept the 'peripheralised' position
that dominant ideology places them in and can rebel
against the rules and authorities associated with
their everyday activities. In short, they are
struggling over the massive imbalance of power,
resources, and contested images of the ci ty in
order to make it more humane. It is a cl assic
example of the often well-camOUflaged 'struggle for
hegemony' (A. Gramsci, 1971).
It is with these issues that this chapter will
be concerned. The first section will provide a
brief account of the development and housing
characteristics of the Castlemilk scheme. Then
there will be a discussion of the formation of
tenants' organisations in the early years of the
scheme. This will be followed with a discussion of
some more contemporary developments and a general
discussion of the nature of tenants' associations
in Castlemilk and their relationship with the local
state and other external social objects.
4.2 Background: Garden Suburb or Concrete ~ungle?
Castl emil k is one of GI asgow' s four maj or
peripheral council housing schemes, situated on the
slopes of' the Cathki n Braes 4 mil es South of the

-311-
city centre and 2 miles from the 'New Town' of East
Kilbride. The scheme currently covers 820 acres, of
which 40 per cent is open space. including 83 acres
of 'amenity' woodl ands. Castl emil k was developed
within a relatively short period during the 1950s.

M
acco~odating families displaced from the inner
urban areas through the post-war re-structuring of
Glasgow's labour and housing markets. The
Corporation bought the 1500 acre estate of
Castlemilk in 1935 from the Stewart family and the
name originated from land owned by them in
Dumfriesshire. (5) The area at the time was almost
totally rural and agricultural.
The appearance of what could be characterised
as a system of urban and regional planning in post-
war Br i tai n was to have some impact on debates
about the development of Castl emil k. This came in
the form of the Clyde Valley Planning Committee
<1949>. These pI anners, the , Evangelistic
Bureaucrats' (J. G. Davies, 1972>, had originally
advocated the retention of Castlemilk for the
preservation of a wide 'green belt'. Besides being
concerned with the whol e question of the economic
and physical restructuring of the Clydeside
conurbation, the Clyde Valley planners reflected
the new trend in planning with respect to their

-312-
prime concern with comprehensive land use planning
(see P. Hall. 1988. p3,22). Their plan envisaged
reduc~ing-,Glasgow's po'pulation by 250,000 and moving
them to New and Expanded Towns outs i de the city
boundaries. Th1s led to bitter disputes between the
Scottish Office and GI asgow Corporation (see, f'or
instance, T. Brennan 1959; G. C.-Mooney 1988; and S.
Darner 1990) . Part of' the planners' concern was to
create 'neighbourhood units' which would be large
enough to 'prov'idediversity of" population and a
full range 'of- -social. recreational and educational
f' ac i I -i tie s' , and small enough to , encourage
acqua-intanceship'. Their concerns in this regard
were set out clearly in the main report:
" .•• insp-tte of IDUch lip-service to community
planning princ,iples and the recognition that
housing to be really good·.ust be related to social
needs.hldustry and recreation; that the group, the
neighbourhood,~tter no less than the house; that
size of towaand. pride in numbers are less
important than \Nelf"are of" population. there are
signs.threugflout the,CouDtry and especially in this
Regi!on, of' f"·or-getf"ull ness of the cOJIIIDUni t y whil e
concentrating-upon lBUl tiplicity of houses.· r (6)
The concept of' 'neighbourhood units' had its
ort'gins in ,the work of the proponents of Garden

-313-
City town planning perspectives (P. Hall, 1988).
The ideology that I ay behind the concept was to
provide for greater social integration, in a
similar manner to Octavia Hill's ideas for the
provision of • Communi ty Centres' (see chapter one).
Despite these concerns the Corporation Housing
Committee convinced the Department of Health that
the estate was urgentl y required for the buil di ng
of houses. Therefore, in anticipation of building
house s on the Castl emi I k estate. not i ce was gi ven
to the nine farmers in the area to terminate their
tenancies in 1946. The Corporation's initial plans
for Castl emil k envisaged the buH di ng of 10.206
houses. However, the Secretary of State for
Scotl and, taking into account the Clyde Valley
Plan, attempted to restrict the development to
5,400 houses in order to preserve a 'green belt'
between Castlemilk and the New Town of East
Kilbride. The Housing Committee of the Corporation,
acutely aware of the pressure by working class
organisations throughout the city for increased
provision of housing, objected to these
restrictions, aptly summed up by the then convener
of the housing committee:
.... They 'Were determIned to pursue theIr protest
to the utmost, that if necessary they would appeal

-314-
to the clty's :Members of" ParI lament, and promote
public demonstrations. He complained that the
restrictions would haJDper the local authority in
getting on with the rehousing which was so urgently
necessary to remove sluJO conditions in the
clty."(7)
The Corporation eventually convinced the
government of" the neccessity of their case and
building work began in 1953, with plans for 8,305
houses. developed in f"ive sections at an estimated
cost of" £16m. By 1959, when a decision was made to
build twenty-storey blocks of flats on the highest
part of the scheme (Mi tchel hi 11 ), the amount of
dwell ing-houses in the scheme had risen to around
10,000. An urban/rural image was still maintained,
wi th t.he woodl ands, the sl opi ng hill s ides and the
retention of Windlaw Farm on the southern edge of
the estate. It was this I atter aspect, perhaps,
which led one early commentator to refer to
Castlemilk in glowing terms:
"It is a quiet, residential area which reflects
In ml nature the Improv I ng standards of the nat I on
as a whole, and is a complete success both for the
tenants who have Integrated to produce such an area

-315-
and. for the authorities who have finally learned
from their mistakes.·f (8)
The idea that the residents of' Castlemilk had
• never had it so good' was only partially true.
They may have escaped f'rom the overcrowded and dank
inner urban tenemental sl urns. but they were
forgotten people deprived of' basic services. The
planning and building of Castlemilk was totally
unco-ordinated and the provision of' social
services. industry and other amenities was non-
exi stent. School chi 1 dren f'rom Castl emil k. and the
other three major peripheral schemes. were being
bussed into schools in the older urban areas
throughout the late-1950s. Despite the fact that
the Corporation intended building Castlemilk as a
township. with 5 'neighbourhood units'. it was a
high-density residential area where you could not
even get a haircut without travelling into the city
centre.
Being buil t in the • mass modernist' (. Fordist' )
era of housing production, the houses in Castlemilk
represented the repetitive uniformity associated
with the flatted public estates of' modern mass
housing provision. The • brutal reduction in
standards' (S. Merrett, 1979) meant that such
housing was of low quality. The architecture and

-316-
street 1 ayouts were monotonous in the extreme and
the large backland areas between houses were like a
wil derness enclosed by brick boxes. 83 per cent,
(7,910. 1988 figures>, of the houses are in 3 or 4.
storey tenemental blocks and 9 per cent, 0,061.
1988 figures>, in multi-storey blocks. 89 per cent,
(8,4-39. 1988 figures), of the houses have 3 or 4-
apartments and the tenement flats were built to the
'T' deSign, wi th a 1 arge verandah at the front of
most houses. (9)
Until 1988, when 1,076 houses were sold to the
S.S.H.A. (now Scottish Homes), the District Council
was the pr inc i pal 1 andl ord in Castl emi 1 k, owni ng
all but 36 properties of the scheme's housing
stock. Owner occupation has grown marginal I y from
0.4 per cent in 1986 to 1.0 per cent in 1989,
representing a total of 99 houses bought under the
'Right to Buy' I egisl ation. In recent years the
District Council in an attempt to change the tenure
and management structures, and obviously in
recognition of the fact that tenure change through
the ' Ri ght to Buy' was a slow process in
Castlemilk, has also transferred some housing stock
to four par-value co-operatives and housing
associations. By 1990 1,863 houses, amounting to
19.3 per cent of the total stock, had moved over to

-317-
other forms of , social renting' organisations,
including Scottish Homes. (10) One of these.
Castlemilk East Housing Co-operative. as well as
providing 'high quality' houses for rent, has
already completed the f i r s t ' improvement for sale'
project in Castlemilk, selling 20 properties in the
process, at. prices ranging from £17,500 f'or a 2-
apartment flat to £25,000 for a 4--apartment
flat. (II)
In the 1950s, when Castl emil k was buil t. all
that concerned the Corporation was their
preoccupation with the numbers game: 'to build the
maximum number of houses in the shortest possible
time' . To achieve this programme, the housing
department encouraged and pressurised building
workers to increase production by the cl ever ploy
of exhibiting charts at each housing development
site revealing the position of the different trades
I in their execution of their contribution to the
set programme'. (12) The short-term political aim of
increasing house production, alongside the economic
re-structuring of the Clydeside economy, led to the
building of peripheral housing schemes with little
variety in house types, a bureaucratised system of
management, in an austere atmosphere with no social
or community facilities for the people who came to

-318-
live there. In short, the wider needs of the
tenants were never considered an important factor
in the building of schemes like Castlemil k. There
was certainly no consultation with potential
tenants over the planning of Castl emil k. There is
no doubt that there was an administrative need, as
well as political pressure from working class
organisations in GI asgow, for a massive house
building programme. However, while the 1946 Housing
Act made provision for long-term subsidies.
facil fties for the improvement of older housing,
powers to acquire inner city sites and build high-
rise housing etc, savings were made in the building
of these estates by curtailing additional
facil ities which were necessary for basic social
I ife. WeI fare capitalism may have been willing to
provide the funds to build houses for the workers,
it was not going to underwrite social life. It
should be borne in mind that Castlemilk was the
largest municipal housing scheme in Glasgow and in
1971, the peak year, a population of 33,875 were
housed there, all paying rent to the Corporation.
In 1981 the four major peripheral schemes in
GI asgow each had popul ati ons of over 30,000. The
combined population of these four schemes-

-319-
Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Easterhouse and Pollok- was
160,000. (Census. 1981)
It is only now, in the late-1980s and early-
1990s, that the state's attention has turned to the
, needs of the community' in schemes like
Castl emil k, despite the fact that their
deterioration had been identified in official
reports in the early 1970s. (13) A number of
, comprehensive' and 'partnership' i ni tiati ves to
foster urban regeneration have emerged in recent
years, and Castl emil k has been one of the areas
sel ected for special attention in this respect.
These holistic strategies have attempted to
encourage the active involvement of the 'local
community' in neighbourhood renewal, particularly
i n a housi ng context. As this is I ikely to have a
substantial effect on the nature of tenants'
organisations it is essential that we return to a
discussion of these issues in the latter part of
this chapter. However, this chapter is intended to
tell the story from the other s ide- • from the
bottom up'- because, , communi ty' concern with
issues which effect the tenants in Castl emil k are
not a new phenomenon. We need to understand the
nature of the I ived experience of the tenants of
Castlemilk historically and in relation to the

-320-
local state if are to have a proper
understanding of tenants' associations in large
peripheral housing schemes.
4.3 MOving Up The 'Milk: The 19508
Castlemilk. as we have noted. was one of
the massive housing schemes which were developed on
the fringes of Glasgow in the post-war years. The
pioneer tenants had come from allover the city to
live in Castlemilk, with a sizable proportion from
the 01 d south-side, and came f'rom all sectors of
the manual worki ng cl ass with a spr i nkI i ng of
, whi te-coll ar' workers. (14) In some cases, during
the period of' "Comprehensive Redevelopment", whole
closes of' tenants were moved from the Gorbal s or
Govan into a new close in Castlemilk. After being
accepted as a tenant in Castlemilk the actual house
an individual was placed in often depended on a
lot tery, where names were drawn out of a hat- a
ballot organised under the auspices of' a Housing
Department Clerk/Selector. (15) Many of these
tenants were previously either technically homeless

r'
or living in overcrowded accomodat ion. We have
already referred to this situation in earlier
chapters, but it is important to remind ourselves

-321-
of the significance of this transformation for the
first tenants in Castlemilk:
" •.• 1 stayed with my rather in Springf'ield Road
and i t was a room-and-kitchen we were in, we were
on the waiting I ist but there were no houses. We
lived there until around, one or my boys would be
coming up ror rourteen and the other one would be
eleven or so when we came up to Castlemilk." (16)
or:
"It [the old East-end] was extremely poor. I ire
was very very dirricul t, and most people I ived in
sub-l et houses. You were sub-l et from the tenant
who the ractor knew about, so to speak, and i t took
you a wee while ror to get to become a tenant in a
house and they were usually Jist room-and-kitchens
with outside toilets. When you became the tenant
you were the tenant, that was your house even if i t
was only a room-and-kitchen. Part or your house was
sub-let, you probably had a room in someone's house
no matter how many of a ramily you had. Now my
mother brought up six or us i n a small room-and-
ki tchen, not much bigger than this bl oomi n I i vi n
room o' mine .•.• in Wallace Street. We stayed there
until my mother got a house up in Househillwood.

-322-
and. ~ moved f'rom a. room-and -kitchen to a f'our-
apartment. which was like heaven to us."(17)
In many cases these people had to eat, sleep and
live in one room, share an outside toilet with 20
or more ne ighhours and, for the women, it was a
full day's work to do the washing at the 'steamie'
(the Corporation-run communal Wash-house> . Not
surprisingly, then, when the original tenants moved
into Castlemilk they were highly impressed by their
new houses and the new 1 iving conditions this
offered, notWithstanding the fact that their rent
had increased from around £1-7/- (£1.35p> to £8 a
quarter. Nevertheless, the combination of increased
rent. social isolation and additional transport
costs 1 ed a few tenants to return to the i r 01 d
areas:
"When peopl e came to Castl emil k. there was a
tremendous change to their lives. Some people
couldn't take the shock. Others couldn't af'f'ord it.
We ~re I ike early settlers. We needed an extra
wa~ f'or bus-fares to ~t to visit our families.
who were all away in another part of' town."(18)
However, those who did stay, while appreciating
their new homes, soon realised that there were no
support services or community facilities, apart

-323-
from the provision of a hut in Dougrie Terrace
where rents could be paid. No buses came into
Castl emil k. the nearest one stopped at the back
gate of Kings Park on the outer edges of the
scheme. There was nothing except houses- no maj or
roads, no shops. no schools, no doctors, no
cinemas, no cafes. no pubs. no bingo hall s, no
bookies etc:
"When a.h. moved up, once we got the 1"1 itting
over with and moved into the house. everything was
all Jist new, the boose wis lovely, and then a.h. sat
back and said "what have a.h. done here?" Because
where a.h. lived a' Jist ran doon tae the bottom o'
the street and ah had the Dairy. the Grocer, the
Butcher, everything at ma hand and ah came up here
and all ah seen was green f'ields and nothing else.
There wisnae any shops when we came up. we had tae
depend on vans coming up to the scheme, the grocer
van an' that ••• a.h. mean that's 32 year we're in this
scheme and that's us Jist got our Heal th Centre.
we've :fought :for that ror years an aw'."(19)
The de:ficiencies o:f economic and town planning
were not the only obstacles that these original
tenants faced when they moved in. In a situation,
similar to that identified hy Elias and Scotson
(1965), the residents of the nearby pri vate housi ng

-324--
estates of Croftfoot and Cathcart were deeply
perturbed about the possibility of people from the
'notorious' Gorbals living in close proximity to
their salubrious middle class social world:
.. When Castl e.i I k. 'WaS bui I t the peopl e in
Cathcart threw their hands up in horror. They said,
.. oh we'll get pubs and what have yen. You see
Cathcart was dry. So we had a referendum and 93 per
cent of the people in Castle.ilk. voted dry. much to
the relief of the people of Cathcart." (20)
Their relief was shortlived. There is hardly a
copy of the Minutes of the Cathcart Ward Committee
from 1955 onwards in which Castl emil k does not
feature on the agenda, on most occas.ions to raise
disapproval about the behaviour of it's residents:
"A complaint was made that following the
occupation houses In Castl emf I k. numerous
depredations have occured in Croftfoot gardens.
Flowers have been destroyed and coal stolen. Young
children have been hawking papers on Sundays in the
avenues. Whilst appreciating the police have a
difficult task i t was agreed that a letter be sent
to the corporation on the matter."(21)
Within weeks an additional police constable was
allocated to the Cathcart district to cope with

-325-
these misdemeanours, supposedly carried out by
Castlemil k residents. The • establ ished' residents
of Croftfoot and Cathcart were cl earl y intent on
maintaining the collaboration of the local state in
protecting their 'higher social status' from these
, outsiders' The new tenants in Castlemilk had no
s imil ar or gani sati on to speak out on the i r behal f
about the si tuation that they found themsel yes in.
However, they were not slow in responding
collectively to the problems which they faced and a
vigorous communal life developed. The fact that
there were no other facilities avaliable meant that
the Churches. of all denominations, were in a
predominant position in the earl y years of the
scheme. The Church of Scotland used to hold Sunday
services in a workman's hut and the Catholic Church
hel d a Dail y Mass ina converted tenement fl at
before proper churches were opened in 1959. It was
through the churches that much of the early social
I ife in the scheme was organised. The Church of
Scotl and, for instance, ran dances, bus runs,
concert parties as well as more obvious aspects
like the Women's Guil d, Sunday school s, "mother and
young wive's groups", Boys Brigade, Girl Guides and
Brownies. Many people who were not members of these
churches, perhaps because there were no obvious

-326-
al ternati ves, took part in these events. Even t.he
American missionaries, the Mormons, made an
unsuccessful attempt to open a church in the I ate
1950s. Castlemilk also had five Orange Lodges by
the earl y 19605. Indeed two of these lodges, the
Castlemilk Truth Defenders LOL No 108 and the
Castlemilk Sisters of Truth LLOL No 108, made their
own small piece of history when the banners of the
male and female lodges were unfurled
simuUataneously, the first time this had ever
occuned in Scotland. (22) However, none of these, or
other similar organisations, had the ability or,
perhaps. the inclination to bring people together
to strive for improved conditions for all the
tenants of Castlemilk. The campaigns for increased
and better facil ities only really began when the
first tenants' association was formed after an
inaugural meeting in August 1955. The first AGM of
the tenants' association was held on the 31st of
October 1955, with around 200 tenants attending,
and 5 office bearers and 30 members of a Management
Committee were elected. The tenants' association
normally held their weekly meetings in a workman's
hut in Dougrie Road, and sometimes held their
management committee meetings In people's
houses. (23) This tenants' association was much more

-327-
responsive to the developing needs of Castlemilk's
growing population than any other organisation in
the scheme. A variety of social networks led to the
development of tenants' associations p~rticul arl y,
if surprisingly, communal garden-digging:
"One wonderf'ul thing we got here. When we came
up here there was qu I te a number of' peopl e got
together and said "well look we'll need to try and
make something of' this". and people started gettln
into maybe wee groups and starting to talk. ~ had
no hall. so we had to get an old hut at the back
there. Two or three of' us got together like.
through dlf'f'erent organisations. Jist ordinary
tenants and spoke about things. through the
gardening club. We started a gardening club. and of'
course people all wanted a garden at that time .•. i t
was something new because they came f'rom a part of'
the city where there were no gardens ••. ~ had a
horticultural club f'or many years and i t done very
well because that got a group of' peopl e who were
interested in trying to better things . . . . people
respected each other. there was very little
vandallsm.•. there this great f'eell ng of'
companionship, comradeship .•.• There was this
wonderf'ul f'eel ing of' "this is a house and we're
goiDg to try and do something about it". There was

-328-
a great reel ing amongst people to try and better
their position. We then set about discovering there
was nae buses, so we f'ought to get buses, then we
81.1 so discovered the things that you do have. and
they're getting '-VOrse now than ever, namely
District council. Strathclyde Region. councillors
and so on wi 11 not move unl ess you get in. So at
that time then went into Cathcart Ward
Committee, the Tenants' Association nominated
peopl e . . . " (24)
It was from this word-of-mouth communication,
mainl y amongst the men in the scheme, that the
Castlemilk Tenants' Association was formed in 1955,
and almost everyone then living in the scheme
joined the association. The tenants' association
produced a membership book, whose publ ication was
paid for by advertisments. This was then sold
throughout the scheme for five shillings (5p> ,
which was regarded as a yearly subscription for
each individual member. People had moved from other
areas of the city and were determined to join in
any campaign to fight for the provision of adequate
facilities in a new scheme. This self-organised and
self-supporting tenants' association, which is
still in existence today, sought to represent the
interests of all the tenants in Castl emi I k. in the

-329-
context where the building o£ new houses was
expanding. As well as providing a social £ocus £or
tenants i n a new scheme, the tenants' assocfati on
gave e£fecti ve expression to tenants perspectives
and criticisms through their dealings with the
Corporation and other authorities. The main
objectives of the tenants' association were set out
in the membership handbook:
II a)To safeguard the interests of the residents
of the Castlemilk scheme.
b)To en! ighten tenants on local and National
l~gislation which effects them.
c)To promote such activities as may be deemed
advisable to foster the social and educational life
of the COJDIDunity."(25)
This was an organic collective movement of
tenants which had issued from within the community,
not simpl y from choice but from need. The new
tenants were responding to the dLfficul ties
associated with adjusting to life in a desolate,
monotonous and isolated wilderness. While they may
not have developed a collective consciousness at
thi s stage. they fully involved themselves in
building a social life in the scheme, running
christmas parties for children and old age

-330-
pensioners, organising cake and candy sales to gain
financial independence for the tenants'
association, and so forth. They had not moved from
'a people-centred to a house-centred existence' (M.
Young and P.Willmott, 1957, p154). They had carried
and modi r i ed the cuI ture whi ch they had developed
over many years in the older parts of the city to
the new schemes. Culture. in this context. is the
response of a peopl e to the environment they live
in. As such. thi s i ncl uded every aspect of the i r
lives- the way they work. shop, eat, cohabit. play.
It was the totality of their response to the
situation they were living in which is being
referred to here and not culture in any exclusive
or el itist artistic, 1 iterary or musical context.
This political culture, in the broadest sense of
the term, was wedded to the tenants' association
and. through acti ve experience, enabl ed them to
raise issues about the quality of life which they
were expected to accept in a new housing scheme.
It is important to acknowledge at this stage
that, the political culture that developed in
Castl emil k was somewhat different from that which
arose in Pollok, another post-war peripheral
housing scheme. While the tenants' associations, in
both Castl emil k and Pollok, cl aimed to be 'non-

-331-
politic.aL' (in-th.e sense that they were not
affil lated to_.any:political party> the I inks with
formal po!·i..tical parties was more apparent in
Pol·lok in· the early years than was the case in
Castl emil k. (see' M.·· Broady and J. Mack. 1960; and
G.C. Mooney 1988· .for a discussion of Pollok>. It is
difficult at this distance in time to ascertain why
this was the case. but i t probably derives in part
from the later development in Castl emi 1 k of
pol itical organisations. particul arly the Labour
Party and Communist Party branches. Castlemilk.
partl y because of the scheme's close proximity to
middle c.l ass Cathcart. was represented by a
Conservative 'M. P. until' the mid-1980s.
The main priorities for the Castlemilk
tenants' association in the I ate 1950s and earl y
1960s were the campaigns for the provision of
schools and buses, the lack of which had added to
the feelings of remoteness for the new tenants. The
reaso·ns :for this are rather obvious. Most of the
chil-dr-en in Castl emil k were being bussed into the
city centre .schools. whi ch was cost i ng the
Corporation around £30,000 a week in the 1950s. (26)
Public transport was also a necessity for a
population with low car ownership. People had to
travel into the city centre for shoppi ng, most of

-332-
the men continued to be employed in the traditional
manufacturing industries in other areas of the
city, as far away as Sprfngburn and Bridgeton. On
their return from the shipyards and engineering
works in the evening they probabl y passed many of
the women of' Castlemilk who were travelling into
the city centre to clean the offices and shops. It
is not surprising, therefore, that inadequate
transport and the compl ete 1 ack of other social
facilities were seen as a major priority by members
of the tenants association. Durant had recognised
the importance' of the wider provision of support
services in such locations in her study of Watling
in the inter-war years:
'"There are JDany obJections to banishing the
poor to the outskirts of the city. Thei r poverty
Bakes i t particularly di~ficult ~or them to develop
a new co.-nnity under conditions so different from
those o~ the central areas. Moreover. poorer
districts, i~ not contiguous with shopping and
aJDUsement centre. supported by other sections of
the co.ouni·ty. su~fer serious curtailment of their
~acilities for recreation and their sources of
Dental stiJDUlation. A sense of restlesness and
frustration results .. • (27) 1

-333-
The new tenants in Castlemilk, while restless
and frustrated, had no particular difficul ty in
developing a new' conununity'. While sociologists,
in the post-war years, were showing renewed concern
about the apparent , loss of community' these
tenants were combi ni ng together to fight for the
facilities which were indispensable to a full
• conununi ty' life. Through a shared experience and
common adversity they established their own
associational networks to campaign for improved
transport services, schools and, later on,
industry. The campaigns for school s and transport
facil ities started with letters being written to
the appropriate authorities. When this tactic was
met with little success the tenants' association
held public meetings on the issue and demanded the
support of local councillors. By the late 1950s
the Corporation had responded by providing a bus
service for the scheme and schools were opened up-
Glenwood Secondary and St Margaret Mary's Secondary
were the first schools. While the Corporation may
always have intended building schools in
Castl emil k. i t was only through the urgings and the
united action of the tenants' association that the
process was speeded up.

-334--
After this initial • settl ing-in' period the
tenants' association turned their attention to
other aspects of scheme life and the activities of
other social agencies. In 1960 they formed an
action committee to protest against the Revaluation
and Rating Bill. successfully protested against a
6s 6d increase levied by the Gas Board on meters
and, in 1961, they ensured that the Corporation
filled in part of Castlemilk pond. (28) This latter
aspect was no small achievement, as four Castlemilk
children had drowned in this pond by 1966. These,
apparently, unglamorous functional changes in the
activities of the tenants' association are not
really that surprising. The Castlemllk tenants'
association was formed in order to deal with all
complaints about the scheme which the state.
through its planners and archi tects, was
responsible for creating.
However, from a perusal of the annual reports
of the Castlemilk tenants' association, it is
obvious that they were al so consciousl y aware of
the fact that, through a shared class position,
they would have to organise collectively to protect
the interests of all tenants against attempts by
state agencies to reduce their standard of living
still further. (29) The psychic- support obtained

-335-
from living with others similarly placed has always
been important to the continuance of tenants'
associations in Castlemilk, and other housing
schemes. The everyday experience of living in a new
housing scheme had generated a form of'
consciousness- a counter-hegemony- which rejected
, possessi ve i ndi vidual ism' (C.B. MacPherson, 1962)
and a form of pol itical action which was intended
to , rouse the masses from passivity'
(A. Gramsci, 1971,p429). It was in the 1960s and
1970s that this common consciousness in the social
base of the Castl emil k tenants' association came
under sustai ned pressure with attempts to absorb
i t into reactionary populism.
4.4 From Peripheral Paradise To • Problem Estate':
1960-1980
"What" s Wrong With Housing Schemes?" <Glasgow
Evening Citizen.. February 8th-13th 1960)
"The Bitter Wind In The New Scheme" <Glasgow
Eveni·ng Citizen. March 22nd 1960)
"Castle.ilk Folk Jealous of Schemes Good
Na.e"(Ruthergien Reformer, 26-4-63)
"Unrest in the New Housing Estates" <Glasgow
Heral d. 8-3-66 )
-336-
"The Crisis o-r Confidence That Bas Bit
Castle_ilk" (Rutherglen Refor~r. 2-6-66)
II Castl emi.l k at the Crossroads" (Gl asgow Heral d.
22-8-66)
The headlines say it all! By the early 1960s
Glasgow's post-war peripheral housing schemes. and
Castlemilk in particular, were now being seen as
'problem estates'. Damer (1989) has traced the
genesis of the ideology behind this term
historically in relation to working class
neighbourhoods. and provides a thorough critique of
the existing ideology and literature at the same
time. In the earl y 19605, in reference to
Castlemilk. it was t h e ' problem tenant' which the
media, housing officials and reactionary
politicians- the 'traditional intellectuals' - used
as a representation of the demise of the scheme. In
March 1962 the Progressive councillor for the
Cathcart Ward, Mr Edward M. Taylor, moved a motion
in the Corporation aimed at segregating 'bad
tenants' in Glasgow's housing schemes, as follows:
""That i t be remitted to the Property Management
Co. .ittee to consider and report on steps which can
be taken to protect corporation tenants -rrom the
anti-social behaviour of' the small minority of'

-337-
tenants .~ cause damage to corporation and tenants
property and considerable annoyance to their
neighbours and other tenants by their general
conduct .•• (30 )
Taylor Justi£ied this approach by selecting out
a small minority o£ tenants who "by their very
conduct, their use o£ threats, violence, vandalism,
£oul language, their drunkeness and bestiality made
it impossible £or their neighbours to lead a decent
lire untroubled by rear, violence and abuse."(31)
So, in language reminiscent o£ Dickens, Taylor was
proposing to segregate these 'anti-social tenants'
in property owned by the Corporation in the
depopulated 'low amenity' central areas o£ the city
which were being "comprehensively redeveloped" at
this time. These tenants, it was proposed, woul d
serve a probationary period o£ six months in
enclaves away £rom housing areas under the watch£ul
eye o£ the Resident Factors, the 'Green Ladies' and
the local police £orce. 1£ they proved themselves
worthy and socially responsible a£ter this period
they woul d be returned to • normal hous i ng'. whi ch
was a return to notions £irst mooted in Glasgow a
century earl ier.
It should be remembered that Castlemilk was a
heterogeneous scheme, containing tenants £rom all

-338-
sectors of the working class- Shipwrights, Leather
Tanners, Platers, Dockers, CI erks, PI umbers,
Labourers and so forth. (32) Taylor was attempting
to portray a • small mi nor i ty' of the Castl emi I k
residents as a homogeonous 'proble~ phenomenon and
was sel ecting them out for a "new get-tough pol icy"
of re-education. There may have been pragmatic
reasons for Taylor raising this issue at this
po i nt. but the f act that he had represented the
Cathcart Ward for the Progressives/Conservatives on
the Corporation for a number of years and, was
seeki ng sel ection as a parliamentary candidate on
the basis of the new ward boundaries which brought
Castlemilk into the existing Cathcart Ward for the
first time, suggests that there may have been more
obvious political reasons behind the move. If he,
and more importantl y the Progressi ve/Conservati ve
party, was to continue to be elected in this area
he would have to make some impression on the new
'respectable' tenants in Castlemilk.
Activists in the Castl emil k tenants'
association, and tenants generally, were concerned
at the existence of noisy tenants, tenants who
never kept the close or garden tidy, vandalism
etc. (33) Taylor, and the Progressi ve/Conservati ve
party. were able to successfully exploit this for

-339-
years, rema,fning in office representing the
Cat:heart [37th] .. Ward almost undisturbed from 194-9
to 1:973.(34) I t . was . in his interest, and that of
hi.s party's. to identify what he saw as
• respectable" working class tenants who might vote
for. the· Conserv.atives. However, the activists in
the Castl·emil.k tenants' association were not
will ing to accept that this phenomenon- the
• problem tenant' - was unique to Castl emil k. was
characteristic of the scheme as a whole or could be
solved through segregation. There were, it has to
be admitted. ·elear. contradictions in their response
to Taylor':s pro,posals. The secretary of the
Ca.stl~emil k tenants' association, Mr William
Monaghan, referred to Taylor's suggestions in March
1962 as "cockeyed" and suggested that segregation
was a "diTty ward" t but went on to say that:
" ... I believe that the proper ~y to tackl e
thi's' th~ng:ls to give greater po~rs to the local
f'actors.We should. try to rel'orm these people. But
after they have been war.ned three. or 1'our times.
the local factors ,should have the po~rs to evict
them_ .... (35)
By,callingi'or. these powers to be conferred to
the·,··Res·ident ·Fac·tors, the secretary of the tenants'
association was f.mplicit.ly supporting the idea of

-340-
segregating tenants, though ina less draconi an
way. There were other tenants, while in agreement
with some of what Taylor said, who argued that the
great maJority of tenants in Castlemilk. and other
schemes, were II decent. I aw abiding citizens". The
I ocal probation off icer had al so suggested that.
"delinquency figures in Castlemilk are extremely
good compared with other housing schemes". (36)
However, Taylor and the representatives of the
local state were intent on amplifying and
exploiting the existence of a small minority of
"probl em tenants" . through mystification. In the
follOwing years a severe ideological drive was made
to make these divisions between "respectable" and
"untouchabl e" tenants, a breach which has a long
historical traJectory, (see. for instance, C. S.
Loch; 1883; S. Webb and B. Webb, 1929; G. Stedman-
Jones 1983; and. for a local representative, A. K.
Chalmers and J. Mann 1933>. the main exemplary of
the "problem" in Castlemllk. The significance of
such a resolute strategy was to present the
"respectabl es" with a formul ation of the "probl em
tenant" which they could recognise. and allow the
state to intervene unhindered by protestation- or
be confronted with a 'war of position' on the part
of the tenants' association. The purpose of this

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ideology was to ensure that this "small minority"
of tenants could not undermine the traditional
social and authority reI at! ons, cui tural patterns
and I ifestyl es which were regarded as appropriate
for "respectable" tenants. Friend and Metcalf have
noted the importance of this ideological deception
in another context:
H ••• Although such a division has always
existed, i t has assumed di:fferent signi:ficance at
different points in time. This has happened when
the uneven development of the capitalist economy
has swollen or reduced the numbers living on the
:margins of' .. society and as the interaction of uneven
development and the changing balance of class
:forces has acted either to unite or :fragment the
working class as a wbole. II (37)
The £ragmentation of tenants in Castlemilk was
at the root of Taylor's ideological onslaught. The
Corporation endorsed these views in 1962/63 with a
scheme to evict tenants who failed to meet the
required standards of tidy gardens, closes etc, set
by the housing department. A number of tenant
activists objected to Castlemilk being selected out
for this 'pilot proJect' and demanded an apolOgy
from the CorporatIon. (38) However, their attempts
at presenting a posi t i ve image of the scheme were

-342-
1 imited through their partial acceptance of'
Taylor's def'l-nition of' the "problem". The root
cause of' most oj' the untidy gardens. f'or instance.
was not the f'aul t of "probl em tenants". but the
f'act that many of them had been given the
~mpossible task of culti~ating vast wastelands. The
Corporation had avoided all responsibility for this
through the creation of' a reputation which had
little basis in reality and a victim-blaming
ideology- aimed at a "small minority" of Castlemilk
tenants.
While this strategy was not totally successf'ul.
this event shows that a reactionary ideology can
meet with some el ements of " common-sense" and
provide the state with the legitimating tactics
necessary f'or the policing of' working class
ne i ghbour hoods. The real pol icing of' Castl emil k
tenants was for non-payment of rent, as a former
Resident Factor for Castlemilk suggested:
"1£ I sent a rent collector up a certain close
on a Monday to collect rent arrears. by the
Wednesday or Thursday everybody in that street who
~ in arrears would have been down at the office
to clear their debt. as they knew the way that I
operated was to colI ect the arrears for a who I e
street at a time. This· saved any embarrassment with

-343-
their ne~ghbours. In 1975 there ~re 8 supervisors
in Castl eail·,k. . DOW there are 20 and they are not
doing the Job as good as f'e~r people ~re." (39)
Between 1968 and 1979, (excluding figures for
1975) • 1, 118 Castlemilk tenants had absconded
without paying rent and 228 were evicted f'or non-
payment of' rent. (40) This autocratic style of'
housing management was used as an additional
mechanism to f'ragment the tenants in Castlemilk. By
the mid-1960s. the period when poverty was
'rediscovered' on a national scale, an increasing
number of' probation off'icers, chil d care of'f'icers,
health visitors and school welf'are of'f'icers were
employed in Castlemilk, and 'f'amily casework units'
were set-up_ This was the era when the f'irst
f'lourishing'S of' 'Community Development' came to the /
f'ore f'ollowing the publication of' a series of'
reports on 'urban deprivation' Mil ner-HoII and.
Ingelby, Plowden, Seebohm et al. These 'new
prof'essional s of' deprivation' (CDP, 1976) assumed
that it was certain individuals who were
responsible, indeed caused. the , urban
depri vation' . This was certainly the case in
Castl emil k, and other council housi ng schemes in
Glasgow, where the "problems" were being laid

-344-
squarely at the door of a certain category of
famil y:
--
NThe majority of' Glasgow's 14-0,000 municipal
tenants are stahl e. ef'£icient f'aJDllles whose I if'e
and ~rk makes a positive contribution to society.
but --a s.a.ll number beset by ignorance and
hopelessness £all into a feckless or anti-social
way of life". <4-1)
The state's purpose in moving these • street-
level bureaucrats' <M. Lipsky, 1980) into
Castlemilk was not to deal with the root causes of
poverty. <the unacknowledged reality hidden behind
phrases I ike 'urban depri-vation>, but to seperate
out a certain section of the popul ation f'or re-
moral tzation, to provide the "respectabl e" tenants
with a role-model to avoid and to def'lect attention
away from the pal babl e alienation which
Castlemilk's tenants had lived with for more than
ten years. The "cuI ture of poverty" thesis which
was inherent in this kind of' interpretation of'
events has long been recognised f'or f'ailing to take
into account the impact of' wider social and
economic structures <see. for instance, R. Holman.
1978; and S. Damer, 1989> . Hidden behind this
dramatization were a nQrnber of' serious problems
which could not be blamed on individual f'amilies or

-345-
"problem tenants". There were only two factories in
Castlemilk, Miller Textiles Ltd and Wallace and
Camer-on Ltd. who employed around 4-00 workers
between- them. As we have al ready seen, there were
no tea-rooms or cafes, no pubs. no cinema and no
betting shop. though bets were collected illegally
round the doors. For a scheme which had a large
number of young children there was no such thing as
an adventure pI ayground. It is hardl y surpr is i ng.
that after a period of ten years without such
essential recreational facil ities, that certain
problems would arise or that children would seek
out other forms of activity, such as vandal ism,
which would cause consternation amongst tenants.
The Castlemilk tenants' association had been
arguing since its inception that. the fail ure to
provide even the simplest amenities or recreational
facil.iti.es would have adverse effects in building a
full • community' 1 ife, as their chairperson stated
in 1960:
-"There is a need for more social and
recreational a.JDenltles in the scheme and I am
inaugurating a cwapaign to speed up the provision
oC playing :fields. tennis courts. bowl ing greens
and :football pitches. Castleml1k with a population
oC 36.000 people still has none of the above

-346-
faciLities. ,This situation IRUst be remidied and
your support will be appreciated". (42)
The local state did not recognise the full
significance of these claims until the isolation
and boredom of living in such a wilderness (aptly
summed up by locals as the 'Ponderosa') led 3,000
tenants to seek a transfer out of the scheme in
1966/7. It was estimated that 90 per cent of these
tenants had lived in Castlemilk for ten years. The
alienation which the Castlemilk tenants association
had fought against from the beginning was now being
defined as a management problem.
It was at this stage that the tenants'
association themselves began to recognise the full
significance~ and practical effects, of the stigma
which was being attached to Castlemilk through the
pernicious and arbitrary ideology advocated by
Taylor. The chairperson of the Castl emil k tenants'
association, through the urgings of many tenants,
challenged a local councillor to a public debate on
the viabil i ty of creating .. Ghettos for bad
tenants", a chall enge which was never met. (4-3) The
tenants' association argued that segregation would
lead to more trouble in the long-term and was
i ncapabl e of deal i ng with the under 1 y i ng probl ems
in Castlemilk. Nevertheless, the issue of

-347-
segregating "anti-social" tenants re-emerged at
various points throughout the late 19BOs and early
1970s, until the housing department moved 'action
teams' into the peripheral schemes. These action
teams, which were to have "special knowledge o:f
planning, landscaping, and social work" (or,
street-:fighting, house-clearing and snooping) were
intended to deal speci:fically with "anti-social"
tenants. The cost o-f improvement and repairs in
these schemes was increasing on a yearly basis, :for
instance,. -from £2.5m. in 1970 to £3. Bm. in
1971. (4-4) The strategy that the local state chose
to deal with this problem was "Community
Development", a policy which has been exposed by
Cockburn thus:
"This ,then.·was the cOJIIIDUnity -pack.age. I t did
not cost auch .oBey. It ~s not a substitute policy
in, housing.' heal-tb.. education or any of the other
servicing tasks o:fthe local state. It ~ a series
of ·research,and development exercises. intended to
get better value for the DOney local authorities
spend. each year. Corporate management had
concentrated on the internal management structures
of councils. The central state's • cOJDIDuni ty
package' ~ 1;0 ·.a.k.e good its shortcolDings- first
by reviving. renewing. reproducing the relations of

-348-
authority; second by concentrating on implementing
pol icies; third by providi.ng the sources of
information about the working class needed by
manageaent."(45)
The tenants' association's response, while
contradictory, challenged the notion that a "small
minority" of tenants could be held responsible f'or
the problems which faced tenants in Castlemilk
during this period. Increasingly their concerns
focussed on issues which could not be laid at the
door of 'problem' tenants and new associations were
formed to deal wi th them, though the Castl emi I k
tenants' association was still regarded as the main
representative body for tenants and acted as a
federation. For instance, in Jul y 1967. 14 feet
long cracks began to appear in the brickwork of the
"showpiece" Dougrie Heights multi-storey flats. The
Dougrie Place Tenants' Association was f'ormed
spontaneousl y and successful I y campaigned to have
the flats repaired, at one stage threatening to
withold their rent unless repairs were carried
out. (46) The shopping centre, which the Castlemilk
tenants' association had campaigned long and hard
for, was opened in the summer of 1966 and the
Community Centre was opened in December. Other,
smaller scale, campaigns continued(47)- petitions

-349-
for footpaths, zebra crossings and seats for old
age pensioners throughout the scheme, protests over
inadequate refuse colI ect ion, opposition to
children being transferred to city centre schools
(again!), meetings with the local housing manager
to discuss repairs and other complaints, and, with
an increasing number of children in Glasgow, and in
Castl emil k, identi fied by the Heal th Authority as
suffering from rickets the Castlemilk tenants'
ass-ociation mounted a campaign against cuts in
subsidies for school meals. (48)
Despite these problems, by the end of the 1960s
Castl emil k was being regul arl y referred to as a
"showpiece" estate, particularly when compared with
the much .more serious image problems which
Easterhouse was experiencing in this period (see G.
Armstrong & M. Wilson. 1973). In 1969 Teddy Taylor
was referring to 'No Crisis at Castlemilk' (49) and,
in 1975, could write an article praising the scheme
and its inhabitants, with the giveaway title of
, Things are Looking up in a Much Better
Castl emil k' (50) If Castlemilk was going to be
portrayed as a success in comparison to other
peripheral schemes, despite the tenants'
associations evidence to the contrary, Taylor was
making it clear that this was largely due to the

-350-
policies he and his party had been advocating for a
number of years.
In the early 1970s a number of f'actors combined
to al ter . the directi on of' the Castl emil k tenants'
a.ssociation. By this stage political party branches
had beenf'ormed. and a·number of' people involved in
soc i al i.st and I abour pol i t i cs, mainly Communist
Party members, became active in the tenants'
association. While the key offices in the tenants'
associat.ion had previousl y been occupied by men a
woman 'was elected chairperson for the first time,
reversi ng the. tr.e·nd of • women in the seats and men
on the platform'. Two local 'community' newspapers
were published- Castlemilk Press and Castlemilk
Today. These papers sol dover 2. 000 copi es each
mouth and provided the tenants' association with a
focus to circulate knowledge about their
activities to a wider audience. These changes
coincided with the introduction of' the Housing
(Finance ·Provisio.ns) (Scotland) Act 1972. (see GCTA
chapter). The Castlemilk Rents Action Committee was
formed, through the Castl emil k tenants'
association, in the latter part of' 1972 to support
the Labour. control.led Glasgow Corporation's initial
refusal to implement this Act~ The purpose of this
organisatien was to mobil ise as many tenants as

-351-
possible through a wide-based organisation of
tenants'associations, labour organisations and any
other social organisations in the scheme, and to
Join with other organisa1:.ions in the city who were
campaigning against this Act. Attendance at public
meetings of the Action Conunittee was as high as
4-00, whereas the average attendance at meeti ngs of
the tenants' association was around 30. They were
attempting to protect the living standards of all
tenants in Castlemilk and developed a vigorous
protest~ including a rent-increase strike:
"When the Corporation gave in. they held a 500
strong protest meeting. and called for the increase
to be witheJ.d. For 6 IBOnthsthey kept up a campaign
0" lea.,letting. street aeetings with loudspeakers.
sales of Scottish Tenant. and a 2-lBOnth picket 0"

the£actors' o£tice. The campaign failed to create
BaSS reutwitholdfng•. but i t put the issue right at
the centre o£ people"s minds. and showed the
possibil i1~.ies there are!n the idea 0 .... co-ordinated
local . action... (51 >
Despite the fact that the wider agi tation
against this Act failed in its objective the
important factor, in this context, is that i t was
the first time that the Castl emi I k tenants'
association had been invol ved in a campaign of

-352-
direct action. Through the in:fl ux of' new members,
and the rais'ing' of a cri ti-cal consciousness, the
tenants' association were becoming aware of' the
impl ications that pol icies imposed by the central
state could have f'or tenants in their local ity.
They had al so created a model of' protest whi ch
woul-d be utilised in :future activities in
Castl-emil k. They may not have achieved, and i t was
never their intention to in any case, • structural
tr ans:f or mat ion' (M. Castell s, 1977). but they were
success:ful in more broadly de:fined terms. As
Fireman and Gamson (1979) make clear, the simple
act o:f engaging in ongoing struggle educates people
in the dynami cs of struggl e, I eadershi p and pO'Wer,
all of which are significant achievements for
opposition groupings. One example of this
"pedagogic" I·esson occured in 1976 when, against
the wishes of their local council I or Pat Lall y.
over' 50 Castlemilk. tenants marched into the City
Chambers with placards and banners to protest
against proposals to form a 10-member Community
Council in Castl emil k. (52) Another, more
significant. example of' direct action took place in
1983 when a fire broke out on the ground floor of
tenement flats in Scarrel Drive and three families
had to be rescued by the Fire Brigade. (53) After

-353-
spending - some time in GI asgow' s Homel ess Persons
Unit the housing department insisted that the
famil ies return to their homes. Bel ieving that the
fire had been started by a petrol bomb, and that
the houses were uninhabitable, the families refused
to return to this part of the scheme:
"Rumours that ~ are asking for areas such as
Fernhill" Carmunuock and Blairbeth are ridiculous.
We have actually appl ied for vacant housing in
Ardencra-ig Road and that· isu' t exactly Buckingham
Palace but i t is .away fro. Searrel Road and that is
all we are asking for. "(54-)
The housing department. however, were refusing
to accept that the -tenants had a sui tabl e case for
re-housing and insisted that they return to their
forme-r homes. The three famil ies, along with others
supporting them, organised a • sit-in' in the
Castl emil k office of the housing department. This
occupat.ion I asted for over a week and 4-8 arrests
were made. The same 12 peopl e were arrested on
three sepftrate occassions, firstly for trespass and
on the last occafsion for 'Breach of the Peace'. On
the evening before their court appearance the
charges were dropped for no apparent reason, other
than the state wanting to avert a potentially
controversial confrontation with these tenants.

-354--
However, the tenants continued to campaign for re-
housing and erected tents and a caravan outside the
local housing office, protests to the Director of
Housing and councillors were organised, and
eventually negotiations with local housing
management staff were held. Through these various
tactics, and,with·the support of many other tenants
in Castlemil·k, the families were eventually re-
housed six weeks after the t'ire in Scarrel Drive
and four weeks after their 'sit-in' began.
The main point about this event is that a
reasonable request f'or re-housing was met with, at
the very least, insensitivity by housing management
and local couneill ors'and by the repressive use of
arrest and· ·harrassment by the pol ice force. These
tactics were obviously intended to structure the
context of' the tenants} interaction with the
agencies of' the local state through the more
routinized f'orms of' social control which the state
had become accustomed to utilizing. This is similar
to the general tendenc ies wi th regard to state
reaction to opposition organisations that
Oberschall <1979 ) identified. Oberschall argues
that the state's initial reaction to opposi tion
groupings is to • persuade them to take part in
routine pol i tical transactions'. If this strategy
"
-355-
.fail s the state concentrates on the immediate
problem of social control, and this is mostly dealt
wi th by means of repression. However. this was a
group of tenants·~ho were not will ing accompl ices
to incorporation or open to pol icies of' potential
'con:fli.ct resolutionJ ·• In Dearlove's (1974-) terms
they were an 'unheLpful group' and they were
determi.ned to use every tactic, incl uding direct
action, to convince all representatives of the
local state apparatus of the legitimacy of' their
case. These tenants were, following Gramsci again,
'organic intellectuals' of' the working class whose
purpose was to formalize and guide the emotions of
peopl e who were attempting to overcome experience
of powerlessness and alienation. The outcome of
this short struggle was a small but important
victo-ry for these tenants.··
However. Castlemilk was now faced with a number
of wider problems which would have to be addressed
in the 1980s. The local press, politicians and the
housing management department were now ref'erring to
Glasgow's peripheral housing schemes as "no-go
areas", with Castl emil k, Drumchapel. Easterhouse
and Pollok top of the 1 ist. In 1985 the Council,
acting in the role of' colonial administrator, set
up an "early warni ngsystem" to alert housing and

-356-
social .work: officials of "imminent dangers" in the
peripheral schemes. (55) The 1981 Census had
indicated· that Castl emil k' s popul ation had dropped
from 36,951 in 1971 to 28,855 in 1981 and
Strathcl yde Regional Council had estimated that
this would be down to 23,400 by 1986. It was,
perhaps, inevitabl.e that these factors- alongside
the increases in unemployment level s, inadequate
transport services and probl ems arising from the
desig'B~o:f~ the housi:ng in Castlemilk- would evoke
some,k-ind of sustained response from the state. The
Jargon whi-ch accompanied the subsequent response
was "New Life for Castlemilk", at a campaign launch
in November 1986. (56) We need now to turn our
attention ,to an anal ysis of what this "new 1 ife"
will have to offer the tenants of Castl emil k.
4.5 The Re-Structuri:ug of a Housing Scheme:
Castle.ilk in the 80s
II Peri pheral estates are in very low demand and
pressure "'-or ,transf.ers out i's high.. Alar ge scal e
exodus o~ population has only been avoided through
the shortage o~ public and af~ordable private
housing .in. other areas. It is clear that these
estates IIWSt continue to house large populations
for many years to come and that fundamental changes
are necessary to create viable co..unitles and

-357-
a.void a.n, ir.reversible decline into ghettos of the
poor -and uneaployed."(57)
The Gr·ieve Inqu-lry into Housing in Glasgow
(1986) made i t evident that a plan £01' 'GHding The
Ghetto' was required to prevent the further decline
in popularity of Glasgow's four main peripheral
housing schemes. This is what really lies behind
the p-romot.ion of schemes for 'tenant participation'
The Grieve Inquiry also recommended that the
District Council should transfer up to 50 per cent
of the peripheral est'ate housing stock (25 per cent
of Glasgow's total stock of council houses) to
Housing Associations. housing co-operatives and to
home ownership. The 'residualisation of council
housing' in GI asgow was to be reversed through
adopting the dominant perspective on housing tenure
develo:pment which has existed in Britain since the
early 198Qs in both political and academic circles
(see, for instance, P. Saunders, 1990). It is,
principally, these powerful ideological, and
practical, changes that has led GI asgow District
Council to retreat into a more fragmented, more
market-oriented form o:f- intervention in housing
development- or as some writers would prefer 'post-
modernist' (See S. Smith & A. Kearns. 1990)
Nevertheless, while the above quotation makes it

-358-
clear ·that housing tenure development is one
important f'actor in the emerging strategies, it
also alludes to the existence of' an implicit agenda
to alter the class composition of' those tenants who
will live in the peripheral schemes in the f'uture.
The 1 ikel y success, or otherwise, of' this strategy
to promote an enterprise culture will be more
apparent, at least in the short-term, in Castlemilk
where the Grieve recommendations have been
incorporated. into the. wider plans of the District
Council, Strathcl yde Regional Council and the , I
Scottish Of'f'ice-through ' New Lif'e for Urban
Scotland'. (hereaf'ter 'New Life').
One important f'actor, among many, which
conce:rns·tenants' associations in Castlemilk is the
proposal -to-:'--transf'er I arge sections of' the pub 1 ic
sector hous-.ing sto.ck to other f'orms of' tenure. The
strategy f'a:voured by the state, at both Scottish
Off'ice and Glasgow District Council (GDC) level, is
to have at 1 east 20 per cent owner occupation, 30
per cent in co-operatives, housing associations or
Scottish- Homes and 50 per cent in District Council
ownership by the end of the 1990s. While i t is too
soon to assess whether these plans will be
translated into reality some of' the early
indications suggest that the aspirations of

-359-
Castl emil k' s tenants have been disregarded in
favour of the central objectives of the state's own
stratagem. The structural and 1 ocati onal probl ems
whi ch the peopl e of Castl emi I k are f aced wi th in
the late-1980s and early-1990s have already been
referred to in an earlier section of this chapter.
The economic and social despair attached to these
problems are also all too apparent. HO'Wever,
according to some infl uential right-wing
ideologues. estates such as Castl emil k can
encourage even more sinister characteristics:
..... a, culture of dependence .. recreating many of'
the probl~of the inner cities. compounded by an
absence of natural social cohesion and of' physical
amenity. in a totally. but badly. planned
enviroDJBent". (58)
This ideology was incorporated. in part, into
the government's plans to "regenerate" Castlemilk,
as set out in 'New Life'. and approved in a
subsequent report by GDC. (59) Drawing on previous
urban pOliey initiatives, and in particul ar the
GEAR proJ ect in Gl asgow' s East End, both of these
reports are full of jargonised keywordS which are
reminiscent of the ideology behind the
• ne ighhourhood unit' era: e. g. " integrated
strategy", "encouraging diversification on a multi-

-360-
agency basis", "engender a sense of place", "to
turn - Castl:emilk into a suburban town with its own
distinct identity" etc. Both of these reports set
out a vari-ety of social, environmental, economic
and housing objectives which were regarded as
essential catalysts for the regeneration of
Castlemll k. These objecti ves are to be achieved
through, the now familiar, publIc-private sector
'partnership' which had been embraced in previous
urban poli,cy- initiatives (see M. Carley, 1990) The
fact ,th.at --ther.e was to be Ii ttl e new fi nancial
input from government suggested that encouragi ng
pri vate sector investment woul d be crucial to the
success of this strategy. However an important new
element in the 'partnership' approach as formulated
in • New Lif·e' was in reversing the so-called
'dependency' culture by the principle of:
" •• helpiug . res I-dents ta.ke JIIOre responsibil i ty
In various ways .for their cOlllJDllnlties, of 1'ull
Involvement 01' the private sector. and of'
partnershdp between different public bodies and the
pr·:l-va.te seci;or.,11 (60)
The • communi ty' was now be i ng regarded as a
cruci"alsymbol ic 'partner' in the process of urban
regeneration. refl ecti-ng the new wave of interest
in 'active citizensh.ip' (see J. M.Barbalet, 1988).

-361-
This strategy manifested itself when the Castlemilk
Strategy Report (1989) was published, and referred
to one of·Castlemilk's strengths as • its strong and
caring community spirit'. The report outl ined 13
objectives f.or the Castl emil k strategy. incl uding.
• stabil ising the population at 20,000' , to
'increase the prosperity of the residents of
Castlemilk', to 'retain and attract economically
active residents to Castl emil k', and 'to maximise
community involvement in the design and delivery of
all renewal. programmes for Castl emil k' . (61) It is
dif.f.icu-It to imagine how some these objectives will
be ach.feved without a transformation in the social
character of the residents who will live in
Castlemilk in the future. For instance, in April
1989 rents in Glasgow rose by £3.37 per week to an
average of £24.55, a rise of 16 per cent. The
introduction ·of the Poll tax, housing benefit cuts
and the social fund have all had a del eterious
impact on an al ready impoverished • communi ty' .
These factors were clearly identified in the
Castlemilk 'commmunity's' own response, through the
Umbrella Steering Group, to 'New Life':
"All those cODSulted say they would prefer
better puhl:ic services for all to greater weal th
for a few, and would like priority to be given to

-362-
the sick. the handicapped. children, the elderly
and those in: greatest need ••.. We would not consider
the physical improvement of the housing stock., with
it subsequently changing hands and bringing in
better-off peopl e to be an iaprovement. We are
tal ki ng about the peopl e of Castl emil k and not a
geographical area. . . i t is strongly felt by the
cOJ&IIIUnity that the most pressing problem in
Castlemilk is poverty and the resulting
powerlessness o~ the people over the things that
determine the.lrl,lves ...... (62)
This organisation, representing all • community'
groups in Castl emil k, was attempting to address the
maj or concerns :from the po i nt o:f view o:f the many
peopl e in Castl emil k who regard the • Partnershi p'
strategy as a threat rather than an advantage to
the existing residents. They are particularly

i
concerned about the governments mot i ves in taking
increased control over policy developments.
especially through Scottish Homes, with the
corresponding .demise in the role o:f GDC. They are
also totally apathetic about the increasing
in:fluence o:f the private sector in developments in
Castlemilk, and the long-term impact this is likely
to have :for the qual i ty o:f li:fe o:f the present
popul ation. For Castlemil k is now recogni sed,

-363-
correctly, as being a near-perfect urban location
with the sweeping hills, the relatively clean air,
and the easy access, for those who afford it, to
both Glasgow city centre and the nearby
countryside. The state's strategy is to make the
necessary changes to the environment and housing
which will appeal to a more secure and mobile
labour force who will then be willing to move to
such a location. The free-market philosophy and
the pol itical ideology associated with i t has few,
if any. adherents amongst Castlemil k' s 'community'
groups. If anything, their views in this respect
had become hardened through experience when they
produced an up-dated response to the 'Partnership'
proposals in 1989:
" .•. the Partnership Strategy pays I ip service
to the idea of' • developing cOJlUBUnity invol ve:ment'
and • building on existing developments". but it
does not in practice entrust the f'uture of
Castl emil k its own people". (63) [ their
emphasis] .
One way of gaugi ng the accuracy of these
feelings is through a brief analysis of the
experience of tenants' associations in recent
years, as- i t is in terms of housing developments
that the proposed changes have had the most obvious

-364--
impact in both a physical and social sense. Before
the • Partnership' was set up the Castlemilk office
of the Housing Department had its own 'tenant
participation' policy in operation. One high-
priority area where "tenant participation' was
regarded as important by the Housing Department was
in capital projects. These have generally been
'Community Renewal Projects' - small scale, high-
cost improvement projects in • key' locations. The
finance for these projects comes from a massive
£ 14-0m which GDCborrowed through a 'Covenant
ScheIDf;' with four major overseas banks. (64-) In 1989
GDC allocated £2.8m from the community renewal
budget to modernise 92 houses in Castl emil k. Other
areas in the scheme have undergone Community
RenewaL P.easibil ity Studies, which are more wider
in scope but with the same intention of redesign
and stock transfer. In carrying out these
programmes the local housing department established
a 'liason group' of tenants in each area identified
for I community renewal' • whether a tenants'
association existed or -not. The purpose of these
liason groups are:
rr • • to- ~rk with the Housing Department.
are-hi tects and, on occas i-on" contractors, to draw
up the proposals o£ each project and to monitor the

-365-
i-.plemeutation of the Job. One of the - principal
tasks of each group has been ·to draw up the
.a.nageaent-agreement for the proJect. "(65)
This is .the rhetoric, the real ity has been
somewhat dif'ferent. The majority of tenants in
Castlemilk have had very little, if any, say in
which areas should be selected out for community
renewal projects. This has led to major
disagreements about the priorities of' the housing
department in selecting out 'high profile' areas of
the scheme f.or renewal. The maj ori ty of' tenants
believe, rightl y or wrongl y. that there is a
'hi-dden agenda' to modernise the houses in the main
thoroughfares to attract private investment into
the scheme f'or other purposes. Even in these areas,
where the int'luence of AI ice Coleman's 'design /'

('
d-i sadvantage , theories are apparent, there is clear
evidence that the priorities of the tenants have
been overlooked. (66) For instance, a group of
tenantsi n Dougrie Road who were involved in
'participating' - in one of the first 'community
renewal' projects in Castlemilk informed both the
housing department and the architects involved that
they would prefer not to have their verandah's
removed. While they agreed that something required
to be done about the dampness which resul ted from

-366-
this design feature' ·oftheir houses. they were
adamant that the verandah should remain. The
tenants argued that,on the rare occasions that the
sun .shone -en Castlemilk. the veranda~ s were the
only place.whe.re they could enjoy the event in
comf'ort. It was . one o£ - the things that they did
enj oy about". their houses. Neverthel ess, using all
the pro:fessional j argon and experience that they
had, the 'conununi ty' architects and the housing
officials involved·convinced the tenants that there
was no alternative. The resulting' postmodernist'
facade which replaced ,the verandahf s. while very
'pretty'. turned out to be a disaster. The windows
opened out; into m.i-d-air and could not be cleaned
without tenants_ risking I ife and I imb. The resul t
o-fthis • partiei-pation' exercise was that, in
ignoring the wishes of the tenants who had many
years experience of I iving in these houses, the
housing department was left with the option of
employing a window cleaning fi-rm at a cost of
around £250,OQ{) for three years or re-mod'ernising
the renovated buildings at a cost of £4-50,000. They
chose the I at-ter course. af,ter Vigorous campaigning
by the tenants involved. The or i gi nal idea of
'tenant particIpatIon' as formulated by the
cognoscen-ti withIn the housing department was

-367-
merely decorative and i t was not until the tenants
in this ar.ea tllreatened l-egal action, publicised
their compl aints through the press and commissioned
their own independent report on the safety aspects
of the windows, that their viewpoint was taken
seriously.
There have al so been a number of tenants'
groups which have developed as a resul t of alack
of any clear coroml tment to improve the houses in
their immediate area. The reasoning behind the
formation of these new tenants' organisations
points. towards a total disregard for the housing
department's' par·ticipation' game:
lOA public :meet.lng has been called for September
<1990>. to try to find out from the Housing
Department a:od local councillor what pI aDS they (
have for our area. as they refer to a • Glenacre
Strategy' . -wh:I:ch.··the tenants know nothing about."
and.
"Tenant.swcre.fed· up being left in the dark.
about issues wMch· were vital to their way of
life."(67) (their emphasis).
Given· the limitations on funding for
improvement projects i t is understandable that this
situation would occur. Most of the houses in

-368-
Castlemilk have neverha.d any major repairs carried
out· on .them si·nce they were buil t. and the tenants
are deeply concerned, to say the least, about
dampness, rotten window frames, faulty electrical
wiring, etc. .There is also the added factor that
the investment which is available is being targeted
at certain areas, leaving some parts of the scheme
derelict. One exampl e of' this trend is in the
Birgidale Area situated in the South West of the
scheme. where the Dal e Tenants' Association was
f'ormed in November 1988. The members of this
association were concerned that their area,
cover.fng 384- houses, had not been identified for
renewal. In 1990 they conducted a "door-to-door"
survey· of the area f'rom which a report on the
conditions of'· the- housing and the environment was
compiled. The. survey found that 79 per cent of the
houses had dampness, 95 per cent had water
penetration through windows, 93 per cent of'
households considered backcourts a heal th risk and
80 per cent of tenants did not f'ind heating
adequate. This' report, along with a separate
independent. technical report by the Technical
Services Agency, was presented to a publ ic meeting
on the 3rd of' October 1990. The Director of' Housing
had hd-tally agreed to attend this meeting but

-369-
wi trhdrew at a 1 ate stage. The housi ng department,
showi,ng their concern with this matter, sent along
a development manager who in:formed the tenants that
they need not have carried out the survey as they
(the housing department) were :full y aware o:f the
problems. This development worker also in:formed the
tenants that the shorta~e o:f investment had led
them to adopt an area-by-area approach to renewal,
and that Birgidale was a number of' years down the
priority l i s t for improvement. A speaker f'rom the
Right to Warmth campaign group, Pro:fessor Tom
Markus, argued that the tenants were right to carry
out their own survey and suggested that tenants
should proceed through the courts on individual
dampness cases , and could consider mounting a
pol i t i cal· campai:.gn, incl uding rent strikes, to
achieve thei·r obj ecti ves. At the end o:f thi s
meeting the chairperson of' the tenants' association
outlined· the legitimacy o:f their case and, in the
process o:f a cri-ti cal denunciation of' the overall
strategy of' the housing department and other
agencies in· Castl emil k, suggested that their
campaign to have their housing improved was only
beginning. Whether this campaign will be successf'ul
is too earl y to say. However, this exampl e does
reveal that the "partici pation' approach has 1 i ttl e

-370-
to do with responding to the interests and concerns
of tenants and more to do with manipulating their
concerns about lack of control over resources into
support for a management strategy which has already
been decided elsewhere. This example also indicates
that there are some tenants' associations in
Castlemilk who are not willing to passively accept
this hierarchical and coercive form of
'participation' but are developing their own self-
organisedalt.ernatives to the state's own strategy.
Two further examples of large-scale changes to
housing in Castlemilk supports the contention that
the views of the tenants' associations are all but
disregarded in the overall strategies of the
state's attempt to 'regenerate' the scheme. In
December 1989 the S.S.H.A.• (now Scottish Homes),
with the support of the Scottish Office made a bid
to purchase 1,075 council houses in Castlemilk from
GDC involving a £2m transfer fee. The proposal came
with a promise of a £15m injection of funds for
renovation and upgrading of the stock. (68) GDC
supported this asset-stripping operation, partly
because they had no funds for investing in this
hous i ng themsel ves but no doubt because it al so
reflected their own agreed policy for stock
transfer. A public meeting was hastily arranged to

-371-
discuss th.ese proposal s and the tenants were I eft
In lIttle doubt that -the onl yway that theIr houses
'WOuld be lmproved 'WOul.d be to accept the transfer.
A meet i ng to di scuss the proposal s was hel d a few
days before christmas with around 500 tenants in
attendance. This meeting was to be part of a
'consultation' process. However, having sensed the
mood of the meeting. a proposal to transfer the
stock was moved by the local council I or and was
approved on a .. show of hands". The transfer went
ahead and Scottish Homes set-up a locally-based
management team. The fact that this was similar in
structure to a Housing Association should have been
enough warning to the tenants about the impl icit
purposes for the transfer. Within weeks of the
transf'·er taking pI ace the tenants were Informed
that the promIsed investment 'WOuld only take place
if they agreed to form themsel ves into a housing
co-operative or Housing Association to take
responsibil ity for the management of the houses.
Given the ~act that they had never expressed a wish
to do this having no previous experIence of
management, and there had been no indication of
such an option prior to the transfer, the tenants
in this area resisted being forced into accepting
such responsibility. The alternative which was then

-372-
offered to the. tenants was to agree to sell o:ff a
large part of ,the housing stock. once i t had become
vacant. to the private sector. The real ity is that
this whole area of. the scheme has been identified
by GDG. and the 'partner.shi:p initiative' :for private
development .. The problem was in getting tenants in
the area to' agree to it. Through a series o:f very
astutemanoeuvers the state had 1 eft these tenants
with little. alternative. Over a period o:f 2'2 years
the tenants in this area had been manipulated into
a situation ·which they had feared was at the base
of the proposals for the trans:fer.
Notwithstanding these pressures. these tenants set
up . the!·r own tenants' group to resist any attempts
to rehouse· 'them i.notner parts of Castl emil k and to
oppose the . sale of the houses to private
developera. However, in September 1990 GDC forced
through the sale of 612 houses in this part of the
scheme to Miller Homes. who are also building 58
new houses in the area :for private sale.
Another :group ,o~ tenants in the Windlaw area of
the scheme· a·re faced with a similar dilemma. The
SSHA. (Scottish' Homes]. took over these properties
from GDC in December 1987. A:fter simil ar promises
to refurbi.sh their houses. Scottish Homes
management ··in ,the area pursued a pol icy of offering

-373-
the tenants the opti.on of a housing co-operative as
an alternative to waiting 10 years for work to be
carried out.
The Ardmal iesh/Stravanan Tenants' Action Group
was formed in response to these tactics. This group
negotiated for months· with Scottish Homes to find
out details about pl.ans for their area, to no
avail. They arguedf-or more investment to be put
into the houses by Scottish Homes and against
housi ng associati.ons being i nvol ved. In April 1990,
having no success through consultations, they
organised a protest march through the area and
presented a petition to the local Scottish Homes
proj ect manager. They were escorted round the
scheme by f-our uniformed officers of the local
police fa-rce . who, presumabl y to I egi t i m1 se the i r
being there at all, informed the tenants'
representat.iv.es· that, they had "reason to bel ieve"
that Mil itant may 'exploit' their protest march.
[N()te: This march was held three days a:fter the
anti-poll tax "riot" in Tra:fal gar Square]. Such a
ludicrous suggestion was made to look :farcical when
the local management team of Scottish Homes greeted
the tenants at the end o:f the march with cups of
tea and biscuits. They also presented waiting
journal i sts, which this researcher was mistaken

-374--
for, with a prepared press statement on the outcome
of the meeting-which they had yet to conduct with
tenants' representatives. It was a useful insight
into the machinations of the housing bureaucracy
which these tenants were faced with. Like the
campaign referred to earlier, these tenants have
only begun their fight to have their own views
taken into consideration in the plans to
, regenerate' Castl emil k. The important point is
that _these tenants are not • participat-ing' in the
plans for their areas, but are being forced.
manipulated and coerced into accepting plans which
have al ready been made, and which represent the
dominant ideOlogy, by the representatives of the
state at both local and national level. If their
resistance to these plans are to be successful, on

(
their own terms~ then it seems that they will
require to be better co-ordi nated and fight on a
wider collective basis, both within Castlemilk
<where there were 25 tenants' associations in 1990}
and in co-operation with other tenants'
organisations who face similar problems.
4-.6 Conclusion
Much of what has been recounted in this chapter
may -not seem particul arl y important to those urban
researchers with more interest in 1 arge-scal e

-375-
social change. It is, neverthel ess, vital to
understand how people at the I social base' •
(Pickv.ance, 1977), have responded to the changes in
their. material living conditions, and the range o-f
resources .which. they have created thernsel ves to
meet these challenges, if we are to have a thorough
understanding of class struggle in contemporary
Britain. The evidence presented in this chapter
supports the general thrust of Byrne and Parsons
earlier study of a similar 'residualised' estate on
North Tyneside:
. . . . . 1'01" those without work. COJlDOD spatial
locati-on iu,reproduet.ion is serving as the basis
for collective .act i on. That is why the ghetto. a
:mechan4:s.f.or divis·ion. is contradictorily a source
of cl asB'aeti-on" •. (69)
One common f act'or in the experience of the
or igi'ual tenants who movedi.nto Castl emi I k in the
1950s and those who are faced with the state's
plans for re-structuring in the late 1980s and
early 1990s is that their own expressed needs have,
at least, been treated with indifference or, at
worst, al most total I y di sregarded. In the 1950s
there was an obvious need in Glasgow -for more
housing developments and, as my own oral evidence
suggest,s, . the new houses in Castl emil k were a dream

-376-
come true for many of the young couples who flitted
from, the i·nner ur'han slums. However, their
aspirations for a better standard of living
extended to the provisi-On of other social
fac.iliti:es and., as they had not been consulted on
any of these issues, they had to mobilise their own
resources to ensure that the state provided
adequate school s and other social services. It is
this latter common factor, collective mobilisation,
which .the tenants in Castlemilk have maintained
over the years and continues to be organised in a
variety of ·forms. In a situation of such adversity
and al ienat.ion it· is a credit to their fortitude
and determination that they have so resolutely
opposed the full plethora of state agencies on
behal f o.f work4:ng class tenants throughout thi s
period.
**************************
-377-
CHAPTER FOUR
NOTES
1. S. Cosgrove and D. Campbell. (1988). pl0.
2 . . Figures for unemployment from • Unemployment by
Community Area' Strathclyde Economic Trends. No23.
May 1989.
3. Scottish Offlce (1989) Castl emil k Partnership
Strategy Report, Consul tati:ve Draft, pp7-8.
4. Glasgow City Housing. The figures apply to all
claims made through the Castlemilk housing off'ice.
5. W. W. BarT'H973>' pp71-79.
6. Abercrombie,. Sir Patrick and Matthews, Robert A.
(1949) .
7. Counci:14 or·' J ames McInnes. Convenor of the
Housing Commi·ttee of' Glasgow Corporation, quoted
in the Glasgow Herald. 17-5-47.
8 .. Unidenti.f.i.ed correspondent, Glasgow Herald 11-8-
59.
9. City Housi ng.
10. Figures f'romCity ,Housing and Scottish Homes.
11. Figures from Castl.emil k East Housing
Cooperati ve.
-378-
12. Corporation_of the City of Glasgow. Housing-
News 195-3. Hel d i n the Gl asgow Room of the Mitchell
Library VI-7 146-54.
13. See, .f'or instance, Corporation of GI asgow,
Planning De·partment . -(19-73,) • Social Deprivation in
Gl ass-ow'. Apr il.
14. Evidence for both the previous address of
original tenants and their occupational profiles is
avaliabl-e hI the Dra.ft Rolls for Castlemilk held in
Stra.thclyde Regional Archives. D-CF-2/2/13, D-CF-
2/3/26, .D-CF-2/3/29. D-CF-2/3/62 and D-CF-2/3/66.
15. See Castl.emUk People's History Group (1990) p8
and p 12.
16. Mr Me., Castlemilk tenant since 1955, and
founder member of Castlemil k Tenants' Association.
Taped i.nterview 31-8-90.
17. Mrs C. C-astlemilk tenant since 1957. Taped
interview 19-4-90.
18. Castlemilk People's History Group. pl1.
19. Mrs L. CastlemUk tenant since 1956. Taped
interview 2-3-90.
20. Taped interview with Mrs C. 19-4-90.

-379-
21. Mi-nutes of 37th Cathcart Ward Coromi ttee. 10th
November 1955. Held in Strathclyde Regional
Archi ves. T-D 4--11.
22~ Rutb.erglen Reformer. 18-11-1960.
23. Interview with.·Mr M. 6-8-91.
24-. Mr Me. Taped interview 1~-4--90.
25. Castl-emil k Tenants' Association (1960 )
Membership and Year Book to March. 1960. Thanks to
Mr David McWhinni'efor providing me with this and
other information. A. special thanks is al so due to
John Wilson of C.H.I.P. who provided me with
information and assistance relating to many aspects
of this chapter.
26. T. Brennan (1959). p4-0. The figure of £30.000
is -for all f.our peripheral- schemes combined. (
27. R. Jevons and J. Madge (1946). pp25-26.
28. Rutherglen Reformer, 18-11-1960 and 3-2-1961.
On one occasion. after a child was rescued from the
Pond, Teddy Taylor made a special trip by air from
London to argue for immediate action to have the
area made sa~e. See Glasgow Herald 5-4--60.
29. See Castlemilk Tenants Association Membership
and Yearbook to March 1960. Included as appendix.
30. Rutherglen Reformer, 9-3-62.

-380-
31. Edward M.Tayl or. nowM. ,P. f' or Southend, quoted
in the' Gl aSg&w Her.ald, 16-3-62.
32. Evidence avaliable in Castlemilk Dra:ft Rolls,
see :footnote 12.
33. See Ruther-glen Ref'-ormer 16-3-62.
34. The Progressive/Conservative party were in
control o:f the Cathcart [37thl Municipal Ward f'rom
1949-1973 with the exception o:f three br.ie:f periods
in 1962. 1971 and 1972, when Labour were in
control. See F .. W. S. Craig. <1984 >.
35. Mr Will iam Monaghan. secretary o:f Castl emil k
Tenants' Association, quoted in the Rutherglen
Re:former 16-3-62.
36. Mr J ahn Mel aughI an, probation o:f:ficer in
Castlemll k, quoted in the -Ruthergl en Ref ormer, 8-
11-63.
37. Friend and Metcal:f, (1981) p21.
38. See the Rutherglen Re:former 26-4-63.
39. Interview with Frank Johnston, Resident Factor
in Castlemilk :from 1956 to 1976. Held on 24-5-89.
40. Figures derived from Corporation o:f GI asgow
Hous.! ng Department Annual Reports :from 1968 to
1979. The .figures for 1975 have still to be added.

-381-
41. GlasgowHer~ald, 8-3-66.
42. SeeCompltme.ntary-remarks by W. Barbour,
Ch&ir.ma:n -.C.astl'emii k Tenants' Association 1959-60.
in ·Castl emil k Tenants' Association Membership and
Yearhook to March 1960.
43. See Rutherglen Reformer, 1-9-67 and 7-9-67.
44. Glasgow Herald 5th March 1971.
45. C. Cockburn, (1977) p131.
46. See the Ruthergl en Reformer, 1-612-66; 11-5-67;
15-6",",67; and 20-7-67.
47. See Ruthergien Reformer 1-6-67. This includes a
report onev-ldenc.e of increase of Rickets imn
Glasgow.
48. See. G1as8'OwHerald 28-7-67. In this report Sir
David Cuthbertson, honorary Research Fellow in
Pathological' Biochemistry at GI asgow Uni versi ty and
Glasgow Royal Inf"irmary. suggested that rickets .or
"Glasgow legs" was caused by an abscence of fresh
air and sunJ:tght.
49. Edward Taylor, M. P. 'No Crisis at Castl emil k' .
(196'9 )
Magaz i ne. J·ul y. p8-9.

-382-
50. Edward Taylor, M.P.'Things are Looking up in a
Much Better Cast-lemil k'. Rutherglen Reformer 6-8-
75.
51. C. Kirkwood, (,19175) 'Community Democracy'. in G.
Brown['EdJ ,1975. p90. Republished in C. Kirkwood
<t99(}) .
52. Rutherglen Reformer, 19-5-76.
53. See ,·Castlemilk Press. May 1983. Held in the
Glasgow· Room .of' the M1 tchell Library 079.4.14.35.
Janette McG-inn. 'Gi'zza Hoose', has provided a brief
outline of' this campaign in McLay, F [Ed] (1990).
54.. Joanne Coyl e, One of the tenants involved,
quoted in the Rutherglen Reformer 6-5-83.
55. See the Evening Times, 4.-9-85.
56. See I Go For Business', November 1986. p3. This
is a newspaper publ',is'hedby Glasgow Opportunities,
a conglomorat,ion. af representatives from the local
bourgeoisie.
57. Glasgow Dt-strict Council (1986) Inquiry Into
Housing- in Gl-asgow. p21.
58. Ada:m Smith lnsti tute (1988). pl.
59. Scottish Office (1988). see especially p7. Also
Glasgow District Council (1989).

-383-
60. Scottish. Of"f'i.ce < 1988 > ibid.
61. Scottish Off' ice <1989>' p12.
62. Castlemilk Umbrella Steering Group. <1988>.
63. Castl emil k Umbrell a Group < 1989 >.
64-. See, :f.or instance. City of Glasgow City Council
(1988) Covenant Scheme. Finance Department; and
City Housing Glasgow (1988> Community Renewal. May.
65. City Housing--Glasgow. <1989> Report to: Tenant
Participat-ion Management Committee by: District
Housin~ Manager. 24-th-October.
66. See, A. Coleman. (1988) 'Design Disadvantage at
Cast.l emil k. Glasgow' . in Scottish Geographical
Ma~azine, Vol 104-1. p30.
67. Just two of the responses to a survey carried
out in August 1990.
68. See report in Rutherglen Re:former, 22-1-1988.
69. D. Byrne and D. Parsons < 1983 >. P H50.

-:384--
CHAPTER FIVE
THE GLASGOW COUNCIL OF TENANTS' ASSOCIATIONS
5.1 Introduction
"Glasgow Restores Space Heating, Tenants
Legal Action". <Glasgow Herald 18th July 1951>.
"12 Tenement Famil ies Def'y Eviction".
(Evening Citizen 11th January 1960).
"Tenants in High Flats Protest About Rats".
(Glasgow Herald 16th June 1971).
"Tenants Besiege Housing Offices". <Gl asgow
Herald 10th April 1972).
"Tenants Seek a Showowu". <Even! ng Times
24th April 1985).
"Tenants Press :for Council Action". <Glasgow
Herald 30th June 1989).
"Tenants Focus on Flat Roofs as Cause of
Heal th Probl ems" . <Glasgow Herald 9th August
1989 >.
The preceding chapt.ers of' this thesis have
indicated the di verse nat.ure of tenants}
campaigns and housing struggles that have
prevailed in post-War Glasgow. The selection of
quot.ations at t.he beginning of this chapter,
culled from a pile of similar newscuttings going

-385-
back many years. adds to this impression through
a concise representation of the extent of tenant
activities over a lengthy period. Ot.her studies
have revealed the important struggl es of
tenant.s' groups in Pollok in the 1950s, Maryhill
in the 1960s. in the Gorbals/Hutchesontown areas
of the city in the 1970s and in Blackhill in the
1970s (see M. Broady and J. Mack, 1960; R.
Bryant. 1979; S. Jacobs, 1976; and T. Martin,
1982) .
Many of these struggles have been related to
specific issues or been organised within
part.icular locations within the city. However,
throughout. their history, Gl asgow' s public
sector tenants have not onl y organised tenants'
organisations in particualar areas, but have
developed a wider federat.ion of tenants' groups
to campaign around issues of concern t.o all
tenants in the city. Indeed, as the argument
presented in chapter three acknowl edged,
struggles over working class housing issues have
often involved organisation at a national level
through the SCTA. The SCTA was founded in
Scot.l and in 194-8 on the initiat.ive of t.he
Communist Party with a similar organisat.ion. the
National Associat.ion of Tenants and Residents

-386-
<NATR>, being formed in England in the same year
<see L. SkI ai r, 1975 >. A national organisat.ion
of Scottish tenants' associations has existed
throughout most of the post-War years, with the
SCTA changing its name to the Scottish Tenants'
Organisation in 1980. The tendency, however, has
been for this organisation only to become
functional when the circumstances necessitated a
response at a national level. Particular
examples of this form of activity have been the
campaigns against the 1957 Rent Act and the 1972
Housing Finance Act. For various reasons it has
been difficul t to sustain such an organisation
over a I engthy period and its impact has been
limited as a result (see R. Goodlad, 1988>' In
contrast, the Glasgow Council of Tenants'
Associations <GCTA> has continued to exist, in
various forms, since its inception in 1926 and
has been invol ved in many campaigns over the
years, including some of those already referred
to in earlier chapters. (1)
In the 1980s the GCTA has played a
significant role in the development of tenant
pol itics in the city and, as the discussion in
chapter one indicated, in fostering a "co-
operative reI at i onshi p" with the housing

-387-
management department and the Labour control I ed
City Council. Therefore. rather than provide a
full historical analysis of the genesis of the
GCTA, the main focus of this chapter will be on
these recent developments. as this constitutes
GCTA's most influential phase. The discussion
will also provide a useful insight into the
nature of the contemporary tenants' movement in
Glasgow in relation to wider issues already
raised in chapters one and four. However, the
discussion does require a brief historical
outline of the growth of this type of
organisation within GI asgow, if only to
chall enge the image of demands for , tenant
partici pat ion' as a recent. phenomenon and allow
us to locate the developments of the 1980s in a
wider anal ysis.
5.2 Organising From Below
The existence of independent working class
organisations around housing and other social
policy initiatives can be traced back to late
nineteenth century Glasgow, with the rise of
Tenants' Defence Associations, the Glasgow
Women's Housing Association and wider bodies
I ike the Gl asgow workers' Municipal Committee
(see J. Melling, 1983>' More significantly. in

-388-
the present context, was the attempt to control
the activities of local government through
Glasgow's municipal Ward Committees. These were
self-constituted committee" s, which were
nominally independent of political parties. (2)
All municipal electors in a given ward could
vote and stand for nomination to these
co.mmittees. The earl iest recorded reference to
Ward Committees in Gl asgow is that of Gorbal s
Ward Committee in 1860. (3) An early view of
their functions was provided by Bell and Paton
in their study of GI asgow' s municipal
administration:
"A voluntary body, the special functions of
which are to deal with candidates for office,
and. ina mi nor degree, wi th the el ected and
sitting representatives of the wards . . . . The Ward
Committees, consisting of men who take a lively
interest in their own district, discharge also.
for the present, the useful function of drawing
the attention of the Council to the wants and
aspirations of their local ity, to the sl ights
and negl ect under which it suffers patientl y.
and to its demands for a fair share of such good
things as it is in the power of the council to
distribute". (4-)
-389-
Whi I e Bell and Paton regarded the Ward
Committees as essentially non-political
organisations, having no direct association with
any political parties, they recognised that some
of them woul d att.empt to infl uence the pol i tical
direction of the Corporation:
"It now and again happens that the ambition
of the Ward COJlUllittee soars higher. and they
aspire to become a power superior to the
Council. to guide their del iberations. and to
direct members how they should act and vote.
With this high purpose in view a kind of
official recognition has now and again been
demanded. The right of the Ward COJlUllittee to be
suppl led with Council Minutes and official
documents has been asserted; but al though semi-
official and social recognition of their val ue
and services have been freely accorded. the
Council bas wisely and steadily declined to
recognise the claim of such committees
officially to discuss their undertakings and to
direct their policy". (5)
This has been a recurring and controversial
theme t.hroughout the history of local based,
independent 'non- pol itical' organisations and
their relationship with the local state (see,

-390-
for exampl e, C. Cockburn, 1977) . However, as
Melling noted, in the early part of this century
the I.L.P. in Glasgow made a hid for control of
local government hy the 'colonisation' of the
Ward Committees. The I.L.P. certainly recognised
the potential for raising concerns ahout housing
conditions, education and the administration of
puhl ic reI ief through the auspices of the Ward
Committees. (6) Nevertheless, for most of their
history, the majority of the Ward Committees
seem to have heen aligned with conservative
elements in Glasgow politics, including the
Citizens' Union, the Moderate Party and the
Progressive Party, some of whose elected
representat i ves were nominated hy certain Ward
Commi ttees. (7) One reason for this is prohahl y
related to the shift in 1. L. P. strategy ,towards
more direct i nvol vement with tenants'
associations in the inter-War years. The need
for more organised tenants' associations was
identified hy a leading figure in the 1. L. P.,
councillor Paddy Dollan, in 1925:
"The individual tenant is too weak to obtain
Justice, by his own ef'forts, in the matter of
repairs, amenities, and charges. If the tenants
were organised, they 'WOul d be abl e to meet the

-391-
organised :factors and negotiate agreements.
which might be observed by both parties. The
formation of tenants· associations should be
encouraged, with a view to obtaining reasonable
observance or laws intended to benerit and
protect househol ders. and al so ror the purpose
of mai ntai ni ng a constant interest in the need
for the greater production of improved housing
at lower rents". (8)
While Dollan was obviously concerned with
the position of tenants of private landlords,
the first council schemes, built under the 1919
and 1924- Housing Acts, had been tenanted and
tenants' associations had been formed in some of
these areas. (9) ~ithin a year of Dollan's report
being publ ished the GCTA was formed, to co-
ordinate the activities of the tenants'
associations that had been founded in the new
schemes. The objectives of the organisation were
clearly set out in their constitution:
"a>To secure co-operation between the
affiliated associations;
b>To create and encourage social and
educational facilities within the housing
schemes in Glasgow;
-392-
c)To Provide means of organisation.
information. assistance and protection to the
associations and members appertaining to house
occupancy and civic responsibilities
thereto". <1 0 )
The GCTA also declared itself to be a 'non-
pol i t i cal and non-sectar i an' organisation open
to all tenants within the city boundaries. Given
the nature of housing conditions and political
cuI ture in GI asgow the GCTA coul d not remain
divorced from political issues for very long.
In the inter-War years, in addition to housing
issues, the GCTA became cl osel y i nvol ved wi th
campaigns organised by the N.U.W.M. and the
I.L.P.(11) Initiall y they were a small
organisation, dependent on the commitment of a
few individuals to build up their. membership:
"We spread through speaking in all areas. In
the main i t wis Jist sporadic. wi groups forming
from one close to another and wi all the tenants
getting invol ved in it. We would go along and
speak and set up a committee of 10 or 12 from
each street and invite two delegates along to
our meetings. We were small, but eff'ective and
mil itant". <12)

-393-
Through this kind of organisation, and with
the subsequent increase in the number of
Corporation housing schemes, there were over 30
seperate tenants' associations affiliated to the
GCTA by 1939. They continued this kind of
organising in the early post-War years when the
building of new council housing schemes offered
the opportunity for expansion. The organisation
was mai ntai ned through membership fees and the
organising of jumbl e-sal es, raffl es, house-
socials and donations.
In 1949 the GCTA, with its background firmly
in the politics of the 1. L. P. , came into
conflict with the SCTA over combined involvement
in various campaigns and refused to send a
delegate to meetings of the SCTA. This dispute
seems to have been related to the differing
political orientations of both organisations and
to the fact that they were competing for
membership within the city. However, by the mid-
1950s both organisations were working jointly
against rent-increases and, in particular,
against the 1957 Rent Act. (13) Between them they
were able to organise demonstrations with around
4,000 representatives from tenants' associations
and trade unions against the Rent Act. (14) In

-394--
March 1957 the GCTA organised a meeting on
Heal th and Housing, with a speaker from the
Social ist Medical Association, with 160 tenants'
associations and 57 Shop Stewards in
attendance. (15) The GCTA delegates also gave
their support to the People's Housing Charter at
a conference of the NATR in April 1957. (16)
Attendance at GCTA meetings in the 1950s and
early-1960s, including the AGM's which were held
in Ayr and Hel ensburgh. ranged from 26 to 80.
The major issue for tenants' associations during
this period, as emphasised in chapter three, was
undoubtedly rents and this was reflected in the
numbers attending particular meetings of the
GCTA. (17)
WhO e the GCTA was attempting to gain the
support of additional affiliated tenants'
associations in the post-War housing schemes, as
well as campaigning on other housing issues, it
was mainly through the issue of rents that they
attempted to influence Corporation policy.
Indeed, another major campaign that the GCTA
organised was against the 1972 Housing Finance
Act. (18) They organised meetings and
demonstrations against this Act and, with
tenants' associations in various schemes,

-395-
organised a partial rent st,rike for a period of
three or £our months. As the GCTA campaign
literature of the period indicates. they
expected the Labour controlled Corporation to
form the main opposition to this
legislation. (19) However, like so many other
Labour local authorities, Glasgow Corporation
eventually decided to implement this Act and
began victimising council tenants who had
wi thel d rent (see L. SkI ai r, 1975). The £ear
amongst tenants of accumulating debts and the
fear of eviction, particul arl y as it would
entail a long struggle against this Act, may
have played a part in the demise in support for
the rent strike in this case. By placing their
reI i ance on the support of the Labour group in
the Corporation to oppose the 1972 Act, the GCTA
were unprepared for any alternative strategy
when this opposition collapsed in the face of
legal action by the state. Inevitably, when the
Corporation decided to impl ement the Act, the
GCTA's own campaign also collapsed.
The history of t,he GCTA up to the earl y
1970s suggests that, while officially a • non-
political' organisat,ion, they were fully aware
of the pol it ical nature of housi ng issues and

-396-
organised campaigns which were explicitly
political in nature. They may have been unable
to achieve as much political change with regard
to Corporation policy as they might have wished.
However, they real ised that, even for • non-
political' organisations, the struggle -for the
improvement in t,he living conditions for
Glasgow's council tenants required an
organisat ional strategy which derived -from a
political analysis of housing conditions.
Neverthel ess, there is Ii t t l e doubt that t.he
GCT A went through a per i od of' decl i ne in the
1970s. Some members suggested that the
organisation was not, being utilised in the way
that it should have been, with tenants'
representatives using meetings to raise
individual housing complaints and a general
reduction in membershi p i nvol vement ensued. (20)
Whatever the reasons, the GCTA was failing to
attract the support of 'most of the tenants'
associations in the cit.y and was facing a number
of new challenges on the housing front.
5.3. Taking the Politics Out of' Housing Issues
In 1980 a survey by the Scottish Consumer
Council revealed that there were 223 known
tenants' associations in Glasgow. Of these 223,

-397-
only 38 'Were affil iated to the GCTA. (21)
HO'Wever, membership decl ine was not the only.
nor the main, problem facing the GCTA. In
addition to the internal organisational problems
of the earl y 1980s, the nature of change which
the GCTA were facing was shaped as much, if not
more, by external political processes. In
particular, 1 ike most other tenants'
organisations, the GCTA 'Were forced to respond
to the new direction in housing policy that
emerged under the Thatcher government'$. s of the
1980s. Moreover, GDC had to develop new
management techniques, if they were to retain
the majority of their tenants in the face of
these changes. It was the combination of these
factors which led to a new phase of development
for the GCTA in the early 1980s.
The practical pol itics of the "new right's"
anti-local authority ideological drive of the
1980s and, particularly, the restructuring of
housing tenure and the various measures to take
the direct responsibil ity for housing provision
away from local authorities, raised serious
questions about the future of council housing.
The • residual isation' of council housing also
became apparent ina GI asgow context- where 53

-398-
per cent of Gl aswe( gi ans were st i 11 housed by
the council- with over 70 per cent of council
tenants in receipt of housing benefit and with a
Labour controlled City Council conunitted to
transferring a sUbstantial proportion of its
housing stock to 'alternative' landlords (see
Sir R. Grieve, 1986 and City of Glasgow District
Counc i 1 t 1989) . lnev i tabl y, gi ven the 1 evel of
attacks on council housing- including higher
rents and cash discounts to induce tenants to
exercise the 'right-to-buy'- this period also
witnessed an unprecedented focus on the
management of local author it Y hous i ng wi th a
paradoxical increase in 'tenants rights'. (see,
for instance, City Housing Research Group, 1981;
A.Coleman, 1985; P. Malpass, 1991; and A.
Power, 1987), However, this critical attitude to
local authority housing management had already
been a concern of the state under the previous
Labour government, as indicated in a Scottish
Development Department consultation paper in the
1 ate 1970s:
"The Secretary 01' State bel ieves that many
tenants have a contribution to make to the
management 01' public sector housing both at the
scheme level and in relation to new policies l'or

-:399-
each district •.. Some authorities have gone a
considerable way towards giving their tenants
more say and the Secretary 0" State 'WOul d wi sh
other authorities to do the same ..•. One possible
approach 'WOuld be the establishment or a central
committee in each authority's area, representing
all the i r tenants. whi ch woul d be consul ted by
them on questions housing management
pol icy". (22)
The plans contained in this document came to
be known as the "Tenants " Charter", and the first
Thatcher government inherited this commitment to
improved "tenants rights". Under the provisions
of the Tenants Rights Etc (Scotl and) Act 1980
tenants were, for the first time, given security
of tenure, the right to a written tenancy
agreement and new rights in connection with
counc i I house all ocat i on procedures. Cur i ousl y,
gi ven the fact that the idea of a "Tenants
Charter" had emanated from within the Scottish
Office, there was no provision in the Scottish
legislation for local authorities to consult
tenants on housing management proposals
equivalent to that included in the English and
Welsh statutes, other than on rent increases
(see R. Edwards, 1986). However, a number of

-400-
local author it ies, including Gl asgow, were
looking for ways to improve the quality of their
relationship with council tenants (or, as the
new housing management Jargon euphemistically
refers to them: "customers") at both a pol itical
and managerial level. As chapter one indicated,
the GCTA were regarded as the most
representative city-wide organisation of tenants
and were selected to playa strategic role in
the development of the policy relating to
'tenant participation'. The reason that the GCTA
were chosen for this purpose, as opposed to any
other federated organisation of tenants, was
made at a political level within the Council:
"Co J 0: Why ~re the GCTA chosen as the
organisation best equipped to represent tenants?
Po L.: Well. it was an organisation that
collectively sought to organise the tenants'
movement throughout the city. in the sense that
the problems that exist only vary in degree
between one area and another. not in content.
The objective to give them a greater
influence and a voice in dealing with the
Council on a da.ily ba.sis". (23)
The Labour leadership on the council, in an
attempt to , manage the crisis in council

-401-
housing' (Audit Cornmiss ion, 1986) , began to
consult with t.he GCTA on a regular basis in the
earl y 1980s. As the discussion in chapter one
indicated, the background to these changes in
administrative behaviour can be located in
Labour's loss of pol itical control of the
counc 11 in the late 1970s. It was in this
context, that policies relating to 'tenant
parti ci pat ion' and decentral isation of services
attracted the attention of leading Labour
pol iticians. Or, as one 'key' pol itical figure
described the situation:
"C. J What were the main reasons behind the
develop:ment of pol icies of decentral isation of
services in the late 1970s7
J. McF. In 1977 we had an election which
resulted in a hung council and we lost a lot of
the old guard from the Labour Group_ •• we lost 25
in all and that left behind people that were a
lot younger._.Because were in a hung
situation new ideas were probably easier to talk
about_ The Labour Group had an awf'ul shock and
we real i sed that our policies in the past had
not been getting through to folk ..•. I'm
convinced that if hadn't experienced the

-402-
election defeat change ~uld have been much.
much sICX\iler."(24-)
Despite the loss OT some of the 'old guard',
policies relating to decentralisation OT
services and 'tenant participation' were treated
with some scepticism within the Labour Group
that was re-elected in 1980. While some of the
more progressive members in the Labour Group
fel t that tenants had a perfect right to a say
in housing issues that affected them, there were
still some who were opposed to any consultation
with groups like the GCTA. The consultative
structures for I tenant partici pation' were,
apparentl y, set up after acrimonious debate
wi thi n the Labour Group wi th many st i 11 opposed
to allowing the GCTA to have any influence on
decision -making. (25) However, in the view of
the fact that Labour had suffered a recent major
el ectoral defeat, the 'young turks' eventual 1 y
convinced their colleagues of the necessity for
change.
For a pol itical administration which had
previously paid little attention to the concerns
of the tenants' movement in the city and which
was more used to Stabian<26> organisational
methods, thi s suhtl e shi ft intact i cs served a

-403-
number of useful and inter-related purposes.
Fi rstl y, at a time when there was a possibi Ii ty
of conflict around housing issues re-emerging in
Glasgow, in response to a whole series of
attacks associated with the Thatcher
Government's recapitalisation of housing, it
brought a weakened tenants' movement within the
structures of the local state. This gave the
GCTA the impression that they were growing in
i nfl uence and woul d be abl e to have some impact
on the direction of housing pol icy in the city.
It also allowed the new Labour administration to
argue that they had I earned the I essons of the
1977 municipal elections and were responding to
the needs of peopl e in the housing schemes. In
addition, by providing the GCTA with more
information on the nature of the problems facing
the Council, it allowed the Stabians, rightly,
to lay the blame for the situation on the
Thatcher Government but al so excused them from
adopting an alternative strategy for the city's
council tenants or any sustained opposition to
policies which both GDC and the GCTA were
opposed to in prinCiple.
It is wort,hwhile acknowledging the fact that
the GCTA had been calling for negotiations with

-404-
GDC on a new tenancy agreement since 1978 (see
T. Mason, 1991 ) . When GDC finally agreed to
these invitations for negotiations the resulting
policy of 'tenant participation' proved, at
I east in the short-term, to have greater
benefits for the political administration and
housing management than any that would accrue to
council tenants. The root cause of the unequal
relationship which developed was the ability of
GDC to expl 0 it the vagueness inherent in the
notion of 'tenant participation'. Edwards, in a
review of the work of TPAS, suggested that
'tenant participation' is about power:
"Where the power I ies, where i t should I ie,
who weilds i t and how: these kinds of issues are
the meat of any serious debate about tenant
involvement in decision-making. They provoke
fierce arguments fuelled by fiercer prejudices.
They are the root cause of all the inevitabl e
conflicts between tenant and landlord.
Recognising the nature of power is the key to
interpreting the arguments and confl icts:
understanding it is the first towards ending
it". (27)
The policy of 'tenant participation' that
emerged in Glasgow, with the support of TPAS,

-405-
GDC and the GCTA, managed to myst i fy the nature
of power in the overall pursu it of consensus
solutions at a management level. In the process,
pol itical issues were relegated to mere
background phenomena, outwith the negotiating
principles of 'tenant participation'. The
important strategic decisions on the direction
of housing policy at a local level, in reaction
to the changing dominant agenda of the Thatcher
government, remained in the control of the
Stabians. However, it does not necessarily
follow that this situation will remain stable or
that confl ict over certain decisions have not,
or will not in the future, arise.
Therefore, in presenting this argument it is
essential to acknowledge that these developments
reveal a number of potential contradictions fOT
the local state which structuralist accounts
tend to ignore. (see, for instance, C.Cockburn,
1977; and London Weekend Return Group, 1980) .
The change in housing management ideology, which
, tenant partici pation' necessarily entail s,
opens up avenues that were previousl y blocked.
This allows tenants' organisations, I ike the
GCTA, to appl y pressure on the local state for
increased resources, better standards of service

-406-
and so forth. The success of such organisations
are potential I y greater than that of the Ward
Committees, discussed earlier. For, the GCTA are
not only an • independent non-pol i tical •
organisation but, crucially, are now in control
of their own substantial independent funding and
resources. In addition, the change in housing
management ideology and the introduction of
decentralised consultation procedures also
requires recruitment of a new strata of 'poverty
professionals' within the structure of housing
man age ment- CDOs, TPOs etc. These workers can
often identify with the interests of tenants as
opposed to those of the local bureaucracy.
People in these sorts of Jobs, as Byrne rightly
acknowledged, have two ways to go:
" ••. One Is to become I ike the bureaucrats
who run the system in pI aces I Ike Soweto. The
other is to Identify with those whom they
serve . . . "<28)
A brief discussion of how these
contradictions have worked out in relation to
the GCTA will be the focus of the concluding
section of this chapter.
5.4- In Or Against The state?:

-407-
The leading activists in the GCTA, with
years of" involvement in Labour movement politics
in Glasgow, are clearly aware of the
contradictory nature of their relationship with
GDC. They have welcomed the recent changes
wi thl n the Counc 11 and the hous i ng management
department towards the i r own organ i sat i on. At
the same time they are also wary of becoming the
Junior partner in corporate-style decision
making. These issues were clearly identified by
the chairperson of the GCTA, and are worth
quoting in full:
"Under Frances Hamilton most of' our time was
spent on administration and trying to raise
funds. But. Frances got GDC to recogni se that
GCTA was there. So, we got a £5,000 grant. which
was a pittance, and our own premises. We began
to get into the City Chambers and be heard more,
and they even allowed us to speak. to the full
Council when a rent increase was being
discussed. We were allowed to speak. to the full
meeting every year opposing the increase and
giving our own ideas how it should be
opposed . . . So. over the years its began to get
better and some of the progressive members of'
the Council began to real ise that the tenants,

-408-
as customers. shoul d have a wee bi t more say.
I've a runny reeling. however. that in the
background that council I ors are looking to the
GCTA as a body. in some instances, ror rubber
sta.JOPi ng somethi ng they say. which I" m opposed
to. Thererore. I try to make i t quite clear that
as long as I am chai rman I' m no here r or to
rubber stamp anything that happens in GDC and
some 0' the councillors are no happy aboot that.
That's why "funding is so important. The more
runding that comes into GCTA the IDOre we will
become a very independent body. we should have a
good healthy tension between us . . . We don't want
to get sucked into the bureacracy or the GDC. we
want to remain independent". (29)
Under this kind of analysis, the GCTA do not
adhere to any simpl e notion of a 'hel pful' or
'un-helpful' organisation that GDC can negotiate
with. <see J. Dearl ave, 1974-). They entered
negotiations with GDC on a number of issues with
a clear understanding of the inequality inherent
in such an arrangement. The init,ial intention,
as far as the GCTA were concerned, seems to have
been to be 'hel pful' when they were satisfied
with GDC pol icy. but to ret,ain the option of
being 'un-hel pful' if the occasion demanded it.

-409-
This was a precarious strategy f'or the GCTA to
adopt, in relation to the entrenched political
and ideological power of' the local state,
especially a local state that remained in the
control of' the Stabians.
Apart f'rom attempting, unsuccessf'ully, to
inf'l uence GDC's rent. pol icy through continuous
negotiations, the f'irst major joint~initiative
between GDC and the GCTA was the negotiations
surrounding a new tenancy agreement- the
'tenants I ease'. The circumstances surrounding
these negotiations began when GDC circul ated a
consultative draf't of' proposals f'or a new
tenancy agreement in April 1982. This document
sought to reduce the Council's existing

/
maintenance responsibil ities under the guise of' (
improving "tenants rights" . When tenants'
associations throughout the city objected to
these proposals the GCTA were invited, with the
support of' TPAS workers, to scrutinize the lease
and provide workable alternatives. The GCTA
organised meetings with tenants' associations
throughout the city over a two month period to
discuss their objections, set up a special
working party to prepare a response and reported
back to f'urther meetings of' tenants' groups

-410-
throughout the city. This process resul ted in
the GCTA submitting amendments to GDC's original
proposals f'ol 1 owed by three months of'

\
\
negotiations. The resulting tenants lease which
was agreed between the GCT A and GDC was.
inevitably. a compromise. GCTA managed to get a
strict 24- hour time 1 imit on emergency repairs
accepted, but f'ailed to get a legally binding
commitment to f'ixed timescales f'or certain
repairs included in the lease. (30) The apparent
success of' these negotiations have been widely
accl aimed as unique and, at 1 east one of' those
close to the process has suggested that it was
the potential power which tenants' associations
possessed which made this possible:
,/
"It was the only example I can think of' (
where genuine negotiations took place.
comparabl e to trade union/ management disputes
in the workplace. The tenants actually had
power. they had demonstrabl e power. They had
means to create so much havoc by campaigning f'or
tenants not to sign the I ease . . . If' the Council
hadn't reacted in a reasonably conCiliatory
manner and of'f'ered a negotiated process there
would have been a great big messy public
row". (31)
-411-
While not wishing to question the potential
power that GCTA certainly had in this instance,
it is difficul t to imagine how it could have
been adequatel y mobil ised around the issue of
individual "tenants rights" such as those
incorporated into the tenants lease. By the
middl e of 1985 onl y 70 per cent of tenants had
returned their agreements and, of those
returned, only 60 per cent were filled in
correctly (T. Mason, 1991). Perhaps the most
significant outcome of the negotiations on the
tenants lease was the setting up of' a Joint
appeal tribunal to deal with voluntary referrals
of disput.es under the new 1 ease. These tribunal s
were intended to deal with individual tenants
cases through an informal method which prevents
the possibility of legal action against GDC. The
tribunals were to consist of one GCTA
representati vet one councillor and one
'independent' member. Nevertheless, by the end
of the decade little progress had been made:
"For a long time the GCTA has ~rk.ed for the
establishment of the Arbitration Tribunal
system. I am pleased to report that this has
been achieved but regret that as yet it is not
f'ully operational. in that, it is not being

-412-
fully utilised by tenants. Leaflets and posters
have now been distributed by the tribunal and we
would now propose to run a series of hal f day
seminars for tenant representatives on the
tribunal system. Seminars have already taken
place for E.C. members of the tribunal. To date
only two eases have been heard". (32)
Therefore, even on the level of individual
tenants rights, the tribunals have given tenants
and the GCTA Ii ttl e i nfl uence over events. As
the quotation Just cited indicates, only two
cases had been taken to a tribunal by May 1990.
One of these cases reI ated to dampness and led
to a discussion on the viability of the tribunal
system at a monthly meeting of the GCTA. The
tenant was informed, in a manner equivalent to
that which existed ·before the advent of
tribunals, that the Council was short of finance
to deal with such compl aints and until central
government made such funding aval labl e the
dampness could not be treated. While some
members of the GCTA considered withdrawing from
the tribunal system as a result of this example,
they were persuaded by the TPO to continue to
participate:
-413-
"Don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater. Despite this example, progress can be
made with the tribunal s. A lot of' peopl e would
be happy to see you pullout. Don't give them
the pI easure"'. (33)
The rol e of' this 'poverty professional' is.
clearly. to bring the GCTA and the housing
management department into a closer working
relationship where co-operation is assumed to be
working and conflict is never a possibility. By
advocating a partnership between the GCTA and
the Council, the TPO has pI ayed a central rol e,
with the support of other organisations I ike
TPAS, in moving the GCTA towards a more
developmental rol e whi ch is support i ve of

/
policies adopted by GDC and implemented by /
housing management. The strategy seems to be to
br i ng the GCT A into. but not full y part of and
certainly not against. the local state. This is
one , poverty professional' who would be
immediatel y recognised by the administrators of
Soweto.
The GCTA have taken part in a number of
consultative forums organised through the
auspices of the TPO. Apart from the yearly
ritual of 'consultation' on rent increases, the

-414--
GCTA have attempted to infl uence housing pol icy
through co-opted membership of various Council
sub-commi ttees: the Working Group on Co-
operatives and Partici pat,ion and the Tenant
Participation Management Committee. The title of
the 1 atter commit t tee was, reveal i ngl y. changed
in 1990 to the Committee on Tenant Participation
and Tenure Development, cl earl y refl ect i ng the
Council's priority of disposing of around 40,000
council houses in the city by the year 2000.
These committees met i ntermi ttentl y throughout
the 1980s, though there is Ii ttl e evidence of
the GCTA having any substantial impact on the
overall housing policy of GDC. This is
understandahl e given the fact that the meetings
are intended to mystify power through reverting

/"
to "negotia:tions". The concise Oxford dictionary
definition of negotiation is: 'to confer with
another with a view to compromise or agreement'.
The overwhelming professional advice that the
GCTA have received in this respect has always
been to be prepared to compromise otherwise, it
is argued, there is no point in entering
negotiations with GDC. At no point, during the
period of thi s research, have any of the
, poverty professional s' advising the GCTA
suggested that GDC should compromise or that the

-415-
GCTA may adopt a more conflictual strategy.
Indeed, when the secretary of the GCTA used a
platform at the AGM in 1990 to mount a scathing
attack on GDC's over-enthusiastic promotion of
"alternative tenures" the TPO suggested that, if
there was no apology forthcoming. then he would
recommend that the housing department (and
therefore the Council) should withdraw their
support to the GCTA. (34-) Within two months the
secretary of the GCTA was removed f'rom office.
The evidence from other tenants' associations
throughout the city suggests that they were, in
fact, being advised by the housing department
that moving over to an "al ternati ve 1 andl ord"
offered the onl y viabl e opti on for the future.
Ironicall y. this pol icy to change the structure
of housing tenure in the city had met with the
approval of the GCTA in February 1990 (see City
HOUSing, 1990c).
In some ways the GCTA were forced into
accepting the strategy offered by the TPO and
TPAS. Both the TPO and TPAS had been working
with the GCTA throughout the 1980s and were
regarded as "experts" on housing issues and,
more specifically, 'tenant participation' .
Faced with the extensive and i ntermi nabl e

-416-
alterations to housing policy, these 'street
level bureaucrats' were strategical I y pI aced to
move the GCTA in the direction of consensual
I participation' schemes rather than
confl i ctual political action. Operating as
I traditional intellectuals' their role was, to
draw on an analogy from Gramsci, to weaken the
progressive potential of the GCTA by means of a
"passive revolution". (35) What this suggests is,
that the housing management department and the
Stabians within the Council might grant certain
demands (more 'participation'. representation on
committee's etc) to avoid any confl ict, on the
other hand, the GCTA might find itself in
practice (though not necessarily in theory)
accepting its impotence and might be politically
integrated into the structures of the local
stat.e. This is, indeed, what has happened to the
GCTA in recent years.
The annual general meetings of the GCTA in
1989 and 1990 were attended by 300 and 350
delegates respectively. While these AGM"s
offered the opportunity to mobilise tenants'
associations throughout the city through
developing their own strategies, in opposition
to those of GDC, they were organised on the

-417-
basis of' impressing councillors and the housing
management department of' the
'representativeness' of' the GCTA. There was
little opportunity to discuss the overall
pol icies which the GCTA could adopt as a basis
for campaigning, and these events turned into
social gatherings with a civic reception
provided by GDC. The monthly meet i ngs ot' the
GCTA between January 1989 and June 1990 were
attended by an average of' 35 del egates
representing around 25 different tenants'
associations f'rom across the city. Therefore,
the work of' the GCTA, incl uding attendance at
the numerous sub-committee's of the Council. was
being carried out by a small, but enthusiastic,
executive committee. These same people were also
involved in their own tenants' associations.
Inevi tabl y, perhaps, these monthl y meetings
concentrated to a certain extent on the
administrative functions of the GCTA as an
organisation. The GCTA were certainly involved
in wider issues affecting the city's tenants,
including the Anti-Poll Tax campaign and
opposition to Scottish Homes. However. by
concentrating, in the main, on issues relating
to I participation' with GDC and improving the
organisations own developmental role. with the

-418-
support of the TPO and TPAS, the GCTA failed to
provide an adequate alternative strategy for the
city's tenants. They have had very little impact
on the Council's policy of housing stock
disposal, Community Renewal or the role of
Scottish Homes and private developers in the
housing schemes. For these reasons many tenants'
associations, like those in Castlemilk, have
refused to co-operate with the GCTA and have
prevented them from having any i nfl uence at a
local level. By mid-1990 there were around 450
tenants' associations in Glasgow, but only 138
of them were affil iated to the GCTA. By
concentrating their efforts on playing the
• participation' game they have, to some extent,
become isolated from t.he issues raised by
tenants' associations in many schemes in the
city. This situation has also led to a number of
unsuccessful attempts to form an al t.ernat i ve
city-wide tenants' federation, under the banner
of the Community Renewal Action Group
<C. R. A. G. ), in recent years. These crit.icisms
have led to claims that the GCTA have been
incorporated into the struct.ures of the local
state. This view is expressed by a number of
tenants' associations and at least one Community
Council in the city. Ironically, it is a view

-419-
that is accepted, for different reasons, by the
arch-Stabian leader of GDC:
"C.J. What is your impression of the GCTA?
P.L. The clear picture emerging is that they
are becoming more aware of the problems that the
council faces, and they are becoming more and
more responsible in dealing with their own
problems. They realise that resources are
limited and they work with us in seeking to
expand those resources by pressure on the
Government etc. They are better able, more
ef'fectively, to represent the interests of'
tenants on a collective basis as a consequence
of' a greater abil fty to deal with information
and greater access to in:formation". (36)
For the time being, at least, the GCTA seem
to have met with the criteria of a 'hel pful
group'. My own impression, aft.er studying the
activities of the GCTA for over one year, is
that this is a fairly accurate assessment of how
the organisation has progressed in recent years.
However, it is also a static description.
Throughout the 1980s the GCT A were confronted
with a wide array of changes in housing pol icy
imposed by central government and accepted by
the Stabian leadership within the local state.

-420-
Given the fact that they were also confronted
with internal organisational problems it was,
perhaps, inevitable that they WQuld seek a
dialogue with a Labour council which claimed to
be seeking to defend local democracy and develop
new styles of housing management. There was no
effective political alternative in a city where,
apart from three brief periods, Labour had been
in control of the Council since 1933. The
historical connections between the GCTA and
reformist Labour pol i ticians went back to the
inter-War years. The strong cultural and
pol itical identification between the tenants'
movement and wider labour politics in the city
meant that the process of corporate
incorporation was easier to attain against the
background of attacks on council hOUSing.
However, it does not necessarily follow that
this situation will continue.
The GCTA now have ten years of experience of
the inability, or unwillIngness, of local Labour
polIticians to challenge the hegemony of
Conservative housing pol icy as it effects the
city's t.enants. They have also attained a
greater knowledge of housing issues, accumulated
sufficient communicative and negotiation skills,

-421-
are now i ndependentl y funded and resourced and
capable of building a base around an alternative
tenants strategy for housing in GI asgow. The
contradictions of being in and against the state
could also expand the options of mounting a
challenge to the local state's acceptance of the
dominant agenda in housing over the past decade.
It is these "resources of hope" which could lead
to the emergence of a new and more vigorous
tenants' movement or, as Raymond Will iams said
in a similar context:
II _ _ _ the mounting internal and external
pressures on the present structures of' British
society make it likely that the changes will
have to be lived rather than only
debated ..... (37)
The "battles to be fought" could yet see the
development of a working class counter-
hegemonic st.ruggle simil ar to that which
developed in Glasgow in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century, and again in the early
post-War years.
*****************************
-422-
CHAPTER FIVE
NOTES
1. The GCTA is not the only federated body of
tenants' associations in Glasgow. Other examples
are the Drumchapel and Anniesland Residents'
Executive, the Easterhouse Executive, and the
Cambuslang Combine of tenants' assoc iations.
However, while these organisations bring
together groups within a specific area t.he GCTA
covers the whole city and is recognised by many
tenants' groups and the City Council as the main
federated body of tenants in the city. The GCTA
were involved in t.he campaign against the sale
of t.he Merryl ee houses (discussed in chapter
two> and the Arden rent-increase strike-
(discussed in chapter three). However. they
played a minor role in comparison to the SCTA in
the I atter campaign and to the J 0 i nt Committee
in the former.
2. Ward Committees were accorded certain
privileges by the Corporation. They had the
right t.o hold 12 meetings a year in a municipal
hall free of charge and received a small
financial allowance from the Common Good fund
for working expenses. They also received copies
of the Corporation minutes. (see M. Broady and

-423-
J. Mack, 1960. pI59-160). In this sense, they
can be seen as an earl y precursor o:f Communi ty
Councils. Records o:f various Ward Committees are
lodged in S.R.A.: TD90; TD200/157; TD411; TD455:
TD491; TD472; and TD542/10.
3. Glasgow MuniCipal Ward Committees. Memorandum
by Town Clerk and City Archivist, December 1968.
Document held in S.R.A. DTC 8/1/8/21.
4. J. Bell and J. Paton. (1896). pp66-67. One o:f
the authors o:f this study, Sir James Bell. was
also Lord Provost o:f Glasgow at the time i t was
published.
5. J. Bell and J.Paton. (1896). p67.
6. J. Melling. (1983). p41.
7. See M. Broady and J. Mack. (1960) :for a :full
discussion o:f these issues.
8. Report o:f the Committee on the Rent
Restriction Acts, 1924-25. Cmnd. 2423. p17.
Doll an, who, later became Lord Provost o:f
Glasgow, produced a Minority Report to this
committee, which was published by the I.L.P. in
1925 under the title o:f 'The Clyde Rent War'.
9. See, :for instance, Mosspark Tenants'
Association Management Committee Minute Book.
S. R.A.: TD617/3. The Mosspark Tenants'

-424-
Association was founded in November 1925 but, as
Darner has argued, had; " . . . distanced itsel f from
the ILP-dominated city-wide Federation of
(Council) Tenants' Associations, claiming that
' .. we were non-Party and non-sectarian.' The
Minutes of the Association are emblematic of the
middl e-cl ass, ParI iamentary, and somewhat
pompous manner in which the Mosspark tenants
conducted their publ ic business as a pressure-
group." S. Damer, (1991) p13 of Appendix II.
Therefore, in contrast to most other tenants'
associations in the city, this was one tenants'
association which used the term • non-pol itical'
to totally distance themsel ves from Labour
pol itics.
10. GI asgow Council of Tenants' Associations,
Del egates Card. (Undated) . Copy in Broady
collection: A.M.21.
11. Interview with John Lyons, 2-10-1990. John
Lyons has been a member of GCT A since 1930 and
was elected as its Honorary President in 1988.
12. Interview with John Lyons, 2-10-1990.
13. See M. Broady and J. Mack, (1960). p193, for
a discussion of the dipute between t.he GCTA and
the SCTA. Broady and Mack's account. which lacks
any detailed supportive evidence, is full of

-425-
Cold War rhetoric with Communist takeovers of
the tenants' associations and • fellow
travel I ers' to be found everywhere. They
regarded tenants' associations as being the most.
infl uential Communist Party 'front organisation'
at local community level. This was based on
their own acceptance of a survey of Communist
'front organisations' made by the Industrial
Research and Information Services Ltd (1957) The
Communist Solar System. Apparentl y, the
publication of their own study was blocked after
threats of legal action relat.ing to inaccuracies
contained in the text.
14.. See The Drumchapel Tenant., 1st. March 1957.
Broady Collection F21.
15. See The Drumchapel Tenant, 1st March 1957.
Broady Collection F21.
16. See The Drumchapel Tenant, April 1957.
Broady Collection F21. Amongst other things,
this Charter called for the 'natural right for
all to a dwelling; good repair and adequate size
of houses; absolute security of tenure for
tenants; rents (in all types of ownership) to be
on a national unified scale; landlords' power to
distrian on goods, and to evict, to be
aboI ished; and the creation of local Housing

-426-
Tribunal s f'or settl ement of all di sputes and to
assist tenants to maintain their rights.
17. See GCTA Minutes 1949-58. Broady Collection
F20.
18. Unfortunatel y. I have been unabl e to trace
sufficient documentation of the work of the GCTA
for the period from the 1960s to the early
1980s. Part of the reason for this is that two
of the leading figures in the GCTA- Frances
Hamilton and Iris McDonald- had died during the
1980s and they were the only ones who would have
been able to assist me in tracing this material.
As these two individuals kept the GCTA going
through this period their contribution to the
discussion in this chapter would have been
invaluable. These two women contributed a large /

part of their lives to the tenants' movement in
Glasgow, and it is unfortunate that there is no
existing documentat·ion to record t.heir
contribution along with the role of GCTA during
an important period for Glasgow's tenants. Along
wi th Bobby AI exander and John Lyons, they were
the main individuals who kept the GCTA going in
the 1970s.
19. Leaf'let publicising demonstration against
the Rent Act, September 17th 1972. Thanks to

-427-
John Lyons for providing me with this leaflet
and other i nformat ion. Al so, see report of one
of these demonstrations in the Glasgow Herald,
15-11-72. The onl y local authority in Scotl and
whi ch went to any great I engths to oppose the
1972 Act was Clydebank Town Council, with 15
Labour, 3 Communist and 2 SNP councillors.
However, even with the recent experience of the
UCS work-in behind them, the councillors in
Clydebank agreed to implement the Act after
being fined £5,000 in the Court of Session.
20. Interview with Bobby Alexander, chairperson
of GCTA, 30-6-89. Bobby Al exander was taken to
his first tenant,s' association meeting at the
age of 10 by his mother. He has been involved in
most of the post-War housing campaigns in
GI asgow.
21. Scottish Consumer Council (1980), pp3 and
53. The author of this report wrongl y suggests
that the GCTA has onl y been in existence since
the 1950s. Curiously the GCTA held its 50th
anniversary conference on the 21st May 1989, 13
years after the actual anniversary of its
foundation year of 1926.
22. Scottish Development. Department <1979>. pI.
This consultation document was issued in January

-428-
1979, four months before the defeat of the
Labour Government in the general election.
23. Interview with Pat Lally, Labour leader of
the City of Glasgow District Council, 12th March
1991.
24. Interview with Jean McFadden, 21st July
1989.
25. Interview with Jean McFadden, 21st July.
1989.
26. The concept Stabian is drawn from Tariq
Ali's use of the term, which he uses to describe
a particular form of individual political
behaviour and type of political organisation:
"Stabian: 1. (by pol itical incl ination) Fabian,
interested in power rather than social ism. 2.
<preferred organisational methods> Stal inist,
exhibiting utter contempt for democratic norms
and procedures. Hostile to spontaneity. Synonym:
authoritarian". T. Ali. <1984-), p15, footnote.
For an account of how this type of political
beast developed in Glasgow see Damer, (1990)
chapter 6.
27. R. Edwards, (1986) p2.
28. D. Byrne (1989). p165.

-429-
29. Interview wi th Bobby AI exander, 30th June
1989.
30. Most of the material reI ating to
negoti iations on the 'Tenants Lease' are drawn
from a series of files held by GCTA, held under
The Working Party on Consultation on the Tenants
Lease.
31. Robina Goodlad, first Project Organiser with
TPAS 1980-84, quoted in R. Edwards (1986), p17.
32. Secretary's Report t.o GCTA Annual General
Meeting, 27th May 1990.
33. Research notes taken at monthl y meeting of
GCTA, 28th April 1990. Whi 1 e conduct. i ng thi s
research Barry Docherty. the TPO in GI asgow' s
housing department, was the only person who
refused to be interviewed or to co-operate with
the researcher. Any references to the work of
the TPO have, unfortunately, depended on
analysis of official documents and observation
of his activities during monthly and annual
general meetings of the GCTA.
34-. The TPO asked official s of the GCTA, in my
presence, for time to make an official response
to the secret.ary's statement which he considered
to be totally inaccurate. It was only after this

-430-
opportunity had been refused that the TPO
responded with a threat to withdraw support from

I
I I
the GCTA. The secretary of the GCTA, Martin Lee.
was out-voted as secretary for reasons which
were, apparently, unconnected to this event.
35. See A. Gramsci (1971), pp106-114 on the
concept of "passive revolution".
36. Interview with Pat Lally, 12th March 1991.
37. R. Williams (1989>, p140.

-431-
CHAPTER SIX
CONCLUSION
6.1 Introduction
"The capital ist :mode of production :forces a
separation between ~rking and living at the same
time as i t reintegrates them in complex ways. The
superficial appearance of conflict in contemporary
urban-industrial society suggests that there is
indeed a di chotomy between struggles in the
workplace and in the I iving place and that each
kind of struggle is :fought according to di:fferent
principles and rules ...... (I)
The genesis of t.he argument presented in this
dissertation is that the dichotomy identified by
Harvey is indeed superfiCial. For inst.ance, in the
offices of the Castlemilk Housing Involvement
Project (C. H. 1. P.) in 1990 there were posters on
every wall declaring: "Poverty is the Real Issue",
The activists in the Castlemilk tenants' movement.
who use this resource centre have pi aced these
posters to serve as a constant reminder that,
while their main purpose is involvement in
campaigns reiat.ing to housing provision, the
overall position that they find themselves in
resul ts from thei r struct.ural I ocat. i on as ps.rt of
the • social prolet.ariat' in an urban area that. is

-432-
suffering from the consequences of uneven
development. (2) It is a clear ackno~~edgement
that, while they may not be able to act in
circumstances of their own choosing. they do act
in terms of an evaluation of their posit.ion as
part of a 'peripheral ised' population in a
, deprived' area which is charact.erised by an
overwhelmingly working class social and cultural
mil ieu. The point is, that t.lley are not t.b.e
helpless and passive vict.ims of structural
circumstances that is implied in "new right."
notions about "subsidy junkies" or t,hat contai ned
in recent sociol o&,i cal discussions of the
"underclass" <see Adam Smith Institute, 1988; K.
Aul etta, 1982; and R. Dahrendorf, 1987). They are
active social agents involved in a collective
practice, which is expressed through political
action around issues of social reproduction. This
is not an adoption of a 'romantic' perspective to
working cl ass housing st.ruggl es. As we saw in
chapters four and five, resistance, .just like
hegemony, is often fragmented and fractured. An
acceptance that such divisions exist, and always
have existed, in working class areas does not
detract from the very real contribution of council
tenants' organisations to working cl ass cuI ture
and progressive pol itical mobilisation in

-433-
particular 'localities'. The "battles that have
been fought" are important avenues of experience
within working class areas of urban Brit.ain which
deserve more recogni t ion by urban sociologist.s.
not less.
The activities of tenants' associations in
places like Castlemilk may be organised around
specific , neighbourhood issues' , but they are
regarded by those involved as a mere semblance of
more fundamental conflicts within contemporary
(' disorganized' ) capitalist society. Recent
studies within social science, and sociology in
particular, have emphas i sed the importance of
studying localities and local social processes
(see, for instance, D. Byrne, 1989; P. Cooke,
1990; P. Dickens et aI, 1985; and J. Urry, 1987).
This study has been concerned with tracing the
development of the tenants' movement and housing
struggles in one particular 'locality', Glasgow,
in the post-War years and relating this to t.he
wider processes that have shaped these struggl es.
An understanding of these wider socio-economic
and cuI tural processes has al so required t.hat they
be cont.extualised in a historical framework for,
as Elliot and McCrone suggest, a basis for

-434-
understanding collective action in urban research
means:
.... that i t should be hist;orica.lly inFormed.
sensitive to the processes that have shaped urban
institutions, urban environments and the
ideologies and actions of particular social
groups. We need historical awareness because our
task is to explore change and conflict and
cohesion in the city. It is essential, when
considering institutions-the frameworks of local
government or health or housing or ~lfare
agencies- to appreciate that the liberties or
rights that they confer have been won by struggle.
They ~re not besto~d by benevol ent rul ers but
ceded gradually and grudgingly by local and
national elites confronted by sections of' the
citiz~nry anxious to secure for themsel ves SOIllle
say in decision-making. some improvement in their
material circumstances, some basis f'or fuller
citizenship..... (3)
In the concluding section of this dissertation
we will examine the processes which have shaped
the tenants' movement and housing struggles in
post-War Glasgow.
6.2 The Social Significance of Housing Struggles

-435-
The discussion contained in chapters one and
two indicated that post-War Glasgow has been beset
by a , housing probl em' of considerable
proportions. In his study of , urban social
movements', Lowe (1986) suggests that "there is
little evidence of militant tenants' action in the
1950s". (4-) Similarly. in relation to Glasgow. Butt
(1978) has argued that the early housing struggles
associated with "Red Clydeside" had all but
disappeared in the 194-0s and 1950s. (5) However.
the re-discovery of important early post-War
housing struggles contai ned in chapters two and
three suggest that, rather than consti tuti ng a
period of quiescence, t.here existed particul ar
forms of 'urban protest' that were determined by
social relations amongst the working class in
Glasgow. The squatters' movement, the Merrylee
campai gn and the Arden All-Scotl and Rent-Str ike
drew on the cultural traditions of Glasgow's
working class to organise effective campaigns
around housing conditions and housing provision
(see S. Darner 1980 and 1990; J. Mell ing. 1983; and
J. Smith, 1984-; for details of this tradition).
The recognition of the significance of these links
between social processes within particular

-436-
'localities' at any given time have been made
cogentl y by Urry:
" . . . space per se has no general effects . . . i t
only has effect because the social objects in
question possess particular characteristics"
namely, diff"erent causal powers. Such po-wers may
or may not manif"est themselves in empirical
events- whether they do or not depends upon the
relationship in time-space established with other
objects. These ef"f"ects thus stem not from the
'contingent' relations bet-ween phenomena in time-
space but f"rom the internal structures of"
dif"ferent social objects, objects which possess
dif"f"erent causal pO'Hers . . . " (6)
In the 1940s and early-1950s Glasgow, partly
as a resul t of temporary War-time expansion, was
still a major industrial centre. In February of
1947, for instance, there were still 23 shipyards
in operation on the Clyde. There was a shop
stewards' movement based in the shipyards and
other manufacturing industries (including those in
J.G. Weir's involved in the Merrylee campaign>,
which was I argel y under the influence of a
Communist Party I eadershi p. The Labour Party had
been in power in Glasgow from 1933 and had
consolidated this power within the organs of the

-4-37-
local state. However. the housing conditions that
prevailed were, quite simply, appalling. The
response of the organic intellectuals amongst
Glasgow's working class was to organise families
of squatters to put pressure on the local state
for increased house-building and to successfully
oppose the proposed sal e of council houses. At
this stage the Labour Party was seen as part of
the solution to the • housing problem' in Glasgow,
in the sense that they were regarded as a viable
agent for pursuing change through the local state
by means of external pressure. These campaigns
involved both men and women with a high degree of
consciousness and militancy. organised in tenants'
associations, union branches and various socialist
organisations, and who regarded the pol itics of
reproduction as significant an arena for struggle
as those relating to production relations. 'They
were not merely 'consumpt ion-based' political
actions but, rather, part of the overall struggle
of the working cl ass for social improvement, and
analysed as such by its organic intellectuals.
But whil e these events were taking pI ace
Glasgow was also going through a process of
restructuring of both its housing and labour
markets, as the discussion in chapters one and

-438-
four made clear. Part of the outcome of thi s
process was the dispersal of large sections of
Glasgow's working class to peripheral housing
schemes on the fringes of the city. Initially, as
the discussion in chapter four emphasized, the
tenants' associations that developed in the early
years of the Castlemil k scheme concerned
themselves with the shortcomings of service
provision. Such campaigns entailed a critique of
the local state and, in the process, the Labour
Party. which had been seen as a sol ution to the
'housing problem' in earlier campaigns, now became
part of the 'problem'. This process has continued
in Castl emi 1 k throughout the post-War years, and
has become exacerbated with the impact. of the
'residualization' of council housing and G.D.C.'s
passive acceptance of central Government
strategies for the scheme and its inhabitants.
Castl emil k, 1 ike many other hous i ng schemes in
Glasgow and elsewhere, has become increasingly a
residential locale for semi-and unskilled workers
as well as the mass of the unemployed. This aspect
of the development of council housing is well
documented in housing literature. (7) However, none
of this literature attempts to explain the
response of council tenants to these structural
and ideological changes which have pract.ical

-439-
implications for the mobilisation of housing
struggl es. Therefore. the discussion of tenants'
associations and housing struggles in Castlemilk,
despite the demise of 1 inks to work-based labour
organisations, provides an insight into the
persistence of 'communities of resistance' within
'peripheralized' neighbourhoods.
G. D. C.. in response to the potential ities of
such resistance and in order to manage the social
and economic reproduction of Glasgow's working
class <including the reserve army of labour in the
peripheral schemes), has developed specific forms
of urban management: 'community development' and
'tenant participation' . As the discussion in
chapter five reveal ed, this , ideology of
participationism' <K. Coit, 1978 ) is aimed at
integrating one of the leading sections of the
contemporary tenants' movement in the city behind
the dominant strand of housing policy being
pursued by the local state. However, this
discussion also rejected functionalist accounts of
the local state <C. Cockburn. 1977). Such accounts
are a-historical and consequently ignore the ways
in which the working class have been able to
capture and direct local state institutions for
their own benefit. To re-emphasize the point made

-440-
at the end of chapter five, the strategy of
'tenant participation' as it has evolved in
Glasgow is potentially fragile and open to
conflict. It is, as Raymond Williams said in
another context, based on:
t •••• an all iance of negatives. the priority
being to unite against an immediate evil rather
than concentrating upon the development or a truly
popular programme with mass support from
below". (8)
The history of "battl es fought" in the sphere
of reproduction by Glasgow's organic intellectuals
documented in this dissertation suggests that.
class struggle and conflict over housing could re-
emerge to become a central focus of , urban'

/
pol itics in t.he 1990s and beyond. /
************************
-441-
CHAPTER SIX
NOTES
1. D. Harvey (1985b), p61.
2. G.C Mooney (1988) has produce a seminal account
of the economic and political processes which have
created underdevelopment in the Pollok housing
scheme in Glasgow. The comparisons with Castlemilk
are obvious from details on pages 306-7 of this
thesis. AI so, see D. S. Byrne and D. Parson,
(1983) on the use of the concept of 'social
proletariat' .
3. B. Elliot and D. McCrone (1982), p141.
4. S. Lowe (1986), p88.
5. J. Butt (1978), p165.
6. J. Urry (1981), p458.
7. See D. Clapham et aI, 1990; .J. English, 1982;
and R. Forrest and A. Murie, 1990.
8. R. Will iams (1984). 'Decentralism and the
Politics of Place: An interview With Raymond
Will iams' Interviewer P. Cooke. in Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space. Vol 2. pp369-
374.
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Johnstone, Charles (1992) The tenants' movement and housing struggles in

Glasgow, 1945-1990. PhD thesis

A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or

This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first

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Glasgow Theses Service

STR.UGGLES HI GLASGOW, 1945-1990

CHARLES JOHNSTONE, If.. A. (HONS. )

SUBMITTED FOR AWARD OF PH. D ••

(c) CHARLES JOHNSTONE, 1992.

TO KATE. LOUISE. KATHRYN AND.

INTRODUCTION: TENANTS' ORGANISATIONS AND

II: Sociology and the 'Community' Tradition 8.

III: • Urban Social Movements' and the

IV: Making History: OrganiC Intellectuals

V: Research Note 40.

CHAPTER ONE: HOUSING AND HOUSING MANAGEMENT

1.1: Introduction 47.

1.2: Historical Overview 48.

1.3: The Background to Housing Management in

1.4: Housing Management in Glasgow

1. 5: Housing Management and Practice in

1.6: Community Development 113.

1.7: Area Management 125.

1.8: 'Tenant Participation' 135.

1.9: Community Renewal 144.

2.1: Introduction 166.

2.2: The Political Context or the Sale or

2.3: No Homes ror the Heroes 176.

2.4: Housing For Need Not Prorit: Merrylee 194

2.5: Conclusion 221.

CHAPTER THREE: THE ARDEN-ALL SCOTLAND RENT-

3.1: Introduction 248.

3.2: Rent Strikes in History 250.

3.3: The Landlords Bill 257.

3.4: Not A Penny on the Rent 263.

3.5: Conclusion 287.

CHAPTER FOUR: TENANTS' ASSOCIATIONS IN

4.1: Introduction 303.

4.2: Background: Garden Suburb or Concrete

4.3: Moving up the Milk: The 1950's 320.

4.4: From Peripheral Paradise to 'Problem

4.5: The Re-structuring o£ a Housing Scheme:

4.6: Conclusion 374.

5.1: Introduction 384-.

5.2: Organising From Below 387.

5.3: Taking the Politics out or Housing

5.~: In or Against the State 4-06.

CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION: RECOVERING HOUSING

6.1: Introduction 431.

6.2: The Social Significance or Housing

Many people have provided incalculable

encouragement and assistance in the process of

producing this study. Not all of them can be

thanked individually and I would like to record my

sincere gratitude for all the support that I

received. However, there are some people whose

support I would like to acknowledge here.

This study would never have got off the ground

without the research funding provided by the

E.S.R.C. and their support for such projects

To all those tenants in Castlemilk for

providing me with invaluable information about the